The Approvals app in Teams is a quick and easy way to get (you guessed it) approvals for projects, tasks, or other questions from staff within your organization. In this guide, we'll go over how to access the Approvals app, how to send requests, and how to manage requests and understand their results.

Accessing the Approvals app

Simply click the "..." icon on the left hand sidebar of the Teams Desktop app and click Approvals.

You'll see Approvals appear in the app list on the left sidebar in Teams. You can right-click on it and select to Pin it so it's always easily accessible.

Create a new approval request

In the Approvals app, click the + New approval request button at the top right.
A new window will appear where you can input a name for the task, the staff from whom you want approval, any additional details, any attachments, and you can even specify two custom responses.
Once you're done filling out the new request, simply click Send and the approvers will receive a notification in Teams.

Review approval requests

In this section we'll go over 1) what it looks like for an approver when they receive requests and 2) the variations in Approvals statuses.

Approving or Denying Requests

When a request is submitted, the approver will receive a notification in Teams. They can access the request either from the Activity app or from the Approvals app.

In the Approvals app, there are two tabs: one for Received requests, another for Sent requests.

From these two tabs, you can see the request title, status, when it was created, who it was requested by, and who it was sent to (all the approvers). TIP: If you click on the column titles, it will sort all the requests by that column.

When you click on a request, you'll be able to see any additional description of the request, as well as who has responded to the request and how they responded to it. Any comments submitted by Approvers on why it was / was not approved will also be visible here. If the Approver has yet to respond to the request, they will see a Reject button, an Approve button, as well as a text field where they can add additional comment on the reason for their decision.

Prior to approval	After approval

Understanding the Approvals Status column

Completed

You may see this if 1) you opted to not require approval from everyone, 2) all approvers have responded, and 2) some approvers approved the request and others denied it.

Approved

You may see this if 1) you opted to not require approval from everyone and 2) at least one approver has approved the request. The request will be marked as Approved even if someone else denied the request - it only requires at least one person to approve it.

You may also see this if 1) you opted to require approval from everyone and 2) all approvers approved the request.

Rejected

You may see this if 1) you opted to not require approval from everyone and 2) all approvers denied the request.

You also see if this if 1) you opted to require approval from everyone and 2) at least one approver has denied the request.

Canceled

Requesters and Approvers will see this if the request has been canceled. A requester can cancel their own request by clicking on it, then clicking the Cancel request button.

Using Approvals in Teams