How to build a sequential approval flow in Power Automate (manager, then IT)

Create a Microsoft Form with six fields:

• Employee Name (text)
• Employee Email (text). The flow uses this to send the final notification.
• Department (drop-down, for example Finance, HR, Engineering, Marketing, IT)
• Equipment Requested (drop-down, for example Laptop, Monitor, Headset, Keyboard, Other)
• Justification (long text) so the approvers have context
• Date Needed By (date) so approvers can prioritize urgent requests

In an Excel file on OneDrive, add these column headers: Submission Timestamp, Employee Name, Employee Email, Department, Equipment Requested, Justification, Date Needed By, Approval Timestamp, Approval History and Status.

Select the headers, choose Format as Table, pick any style, tick My table has headers and click OK. Power Automate can only write to Excel data that is inside a table. The default table name is Table1.

In Power Automate, select Create and then Automated cloud flow. Name it (in the video: New Employee Equipment Request Approval). Search for Forms and choose the Microsoft Forms trigger When a new response is submitted, then click Create. In the trigger, select your form.

Add the Microsoft Forms action Get response details. For Form Id, choose the same form. For Response Id, open the dynamic content and pick Response Id from the trigger. This action gives you every answer from the form to use later in the flow.

Add the Approvals action Start and wait for an approval. Set Approval type to Sequential Approval. This one action sends the request to several approvers in order and manages the sequence for you.

For Title, type New Employee Equipment Request | Equipment: and then add the Equipment Requested value from Get response details. This is the subject line the approvers see.

Under the approval steps, click Add new item and enter the manager's email in Assigned To for the first step. Click Add new item again and enter the IT approver's email for the second step.

Power Automate sends the request in the exact order you list the steps. The second approver sees nothing until the first one approves. You can add more steps if your process needs them.

In the Details field, add labels for each piece of information and insert the matching dynamic values from Get response details: Employee Name, Employee Email, Department, Equipment Requested, Justification and Date Needed By. This is what the approvers read in their approval email before deciding.

Add a Condition action. On the left, pick Outcome from the approval action. Set the operator to is equal to. On the right, type Approve, Approve.

With two sequential approvers, the outcome combines each response with a comma and a space. It is Approve, Approve only when both approve. If the manager rejects, IT never sees the request and the outcome is just Reject. If the manager approves and IT rejects, it is Approve, Reject. With three approvers you would compare against Approve, Approve, Approve.

In the True branch, add Send an email (V2) from the Office 365 Outlook connector. For To, click the gear icon, choose Use dynamic content and pick Employee Email. Use a subject like Approved: New equipment request has been approved. In the body, greet the requester with Employee Name and list Equipment Requested and Department.

Still in the True branch, add the Excel Online (Business) action Add a row into a table. Set Location to OneDrive for Business, Document Library to OneDrive, browse to your tracker file and pick Table1.

Open Advanced parameters, select all the columns and also DateTime Format. Set DateTime Format to ISO 8601 so dates save correctly. Then map the columns:

• Submission Timestamp: Submission time from Get response details (under See more)
• Form fields: the matching values from Get response details
• Approval Timestamp: Completion date from the approval action
• Approval History: Response summary from the approval action, which holds every approver and their response
• Status: type Approved

In the False branch, add another Send an email (V2) to Employee Email with a subject like Rejected: New equipment request has been rejected and the same details in the body.

To save time, right-click the existing Add a row into a table action, choose Copy, then in the False branch choose Paste an action. Change only the Status value to Rejected. Save the flow.

Click Test, choose Manually and submit the form. The manager gets the approval email first. After the manager approves, IT receives it. When both approve, the requester gets the approved email and a new row appears in Excel with both responses in Approval History.

Test again and reject as the manager: IT never receives the request and the history shows one response. Test a third time with the manager approving and IT rejecting to confirm the rejected email and the Approve, Reject trail. Because this is an automated flow, it keeps running after you save it, so you do not need to click Test for each new submission.