How to Stage Gate your Approvals in a Business Process Flow

[@ThiagoFerreira-ho8ob]

Great video Lisa, amazing the way you teach and share your knowledge. Congratulations and thanks a lot!!!

[@not_today_jesus]

Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! You are awesome !!!

[@internetperson84]

I just discovered your videos and they've already had a large positive impact on my work life. Thanks so much, and never stop!

[@LisaCrosbie]

Thank you, really appreciate that, no plans to stop!

[@internetperson84]

@@LisaCrosbie If you're looking for ideas for new videos I am looking for a way to add to additional steps to an approval business flow (I followed your steps and it works great!), where, if approved, it automatically takes certain columns from the form and puts them into a word doc/PDF and then have it automatically emailed to a person or two. lol

[@ImranAmiKh4n]

You have the most clear and structured content on model driven apps. Thank you for all of the effort you put into these videos. It is appreciated!

[@LisaCrosbie]

Thank you so much for that :-)

[@ranjanroy1623]

This is the best place to learn MDA , thanks Lisa 1 Q, the "request approval" which is above "RUn FLow " always show as Processing , how to get rid of it !

[@LisaCrosbie]

Yeah there’s nothing you can do about that, for some reason this whole feature has been stuck on preview for so long. Hoping we get a big uplift in BPFs at some stage.

[@ranjanroy1623]

@@LisaCrosbie just solved this puzzle by , adding another Update a row action of the Dataverse connector under the If yes path. And then Set the Table to Process Logs. Then set Row ID to FlowsWorkflowLogId by picking it from the list of dynamic values. Finally, set Status Value to Succeeded by selecting it from the dropdown. it went to succeed from processing

[@tristangeoffroy9286]

Hi Lisa, once again right in the target. Thank you. I like the workaround for the sneaky user ;-)

[@LisaCrosbie]

Thanks - yep, got to look out for those loopholes!

[@mohammedmerchant5628]

Hi Lisa, thanks a lot for sharing, I'm on a path to implement these scenarios in my organization to customize project for the web using model driven apps and what you showed here is similar to the processes we follow. I'm learning very easily via your videos and they're awesome. Thank you.

[@LisaCrosbie]

Wonderful, that’s so great to hear, thank you.

[@mspowerassist]

Thank you @LisaCrosbie for sharing your knowledge and experience, it really helps. I like the way you explain the problem and solution(s).

[@MartinCGaudet]

Hi Lisa. I love your tutorials. They are clear and really helpful. Watching (and learning) from your video while watching the snow fall outside (I'm from Montréal, Canada); king of funny while in the video you were talking abouts the states in your country.

[@LisaCrosbie]

Hello from the opposite side of the world where it’s the start of summer 😎. Thanks.

[@morris5984]

Great, clear video as always Lisa. Thanks! This gave me some ideas to avoid JavaScript for a story I’m trying to solve for.

[@LisaCrosbie]

Awesome, always good if you can go with config rather than code!

[@NWM77]

Great video and very clear explaination. Many thanks Lisa.

[@MrAll2001]

Hi Lisa, thank you for this video - many things became clear

[@LisaCrosbie]

You're welcome, glad it was helpful

[@daletiley7374]

Hi Lisa; Thanks for the info, its very valuable I would like to add a document attachment to the approval is there any way that can be done? maybe you have done a video?

[@georgiostheodorou9946]

Thanks Lisa, could you add a link to the previous on building the approval process?

[@LisaCrosbie]

I've added it into the description now, thanks for the suggestion.

[@salahalawieh1106]

Hello Lisa, thanks loads, clear and direct to the point. What if we wanna return the rejected request to the applicant for updates? I mean the manager will reject and the workflow will return to the previous stage where the applicant have the ability to read the manager rejection comment and update accordingly? Regards,

[@LisaCrosbie]

Sounds like an idea for another video, more than I can explain here - yes, this would require a different way of thinking about it. You can use a workflow to push the business process flow stage back based on certain rules if that's the requirement.

[@salahalawieh1106]

@@LisaCrosbie Thank you for the tip, I am looking for the solution, hope you have this idea implemented in a video posted soon. regards,

[@11alexstreet]

Hey Lisa! Thank you for this video. Quick question: prior to implementing the business rule, you showed how the BFP wouldn’t move forward because the “Approved?” was set to “No”. The error said it was because that field was required and must be filled in. However it was filled in, just with a “no”. On Yes/No choices, must they always be “Yes” to be able to move forward in the BFP? Or was that an additional rule you set up?

[@LisaCrosbie]

Hi Alex, yep, that's the out of the box behaviour of the yes/no field in a business process flow - I didn't do anything extra to make that happen.

[@jaggyjut]

another great tutorial. could you pls advise best Microsoft backend to build an expense approval process. ie sharepoint list or dataverse. the process would incorporate different types of expense claims, finance codes. thanks Lisa

[@HaoChang-bu9oz]

Nice Video and nice explanation.

[@anneshibuya8420]

Hi Lisa. Great video. Is it a way to prevent a user to set Active a previous Approval stage?

[@josegregoriodiazvasquez1871]

Very nice and helpful video, Do you know if it is possible to change the name of the button on the BPF from "Run Flow" to something else?

[@ResponsibleXI]

We didn't see much of a content in last few weeks. Thanks for this one. Can you come up with atleast one video a week? :)

[@LisaCrosbie]

One a week is my goal, but sometimes life happens! Back into it again now, plenty more to come. 😀

[@fajartaufik9418]

Hi Lisa, I've seen the run flow button was disabled, how to do this? Is it possible to disable fun flow button based on other field condition?

[@stevek6418]

curious about this as well!

[@larrygleaner1683]

Hi Lisa. Excellent video, as always! I am having an issue on mine though... I followed your steps almost identically, but my "order ref" field is an autonumber field in my table. Seems that the business rule is not working on this. The "Approved?" field is neither going invisible nor locking. Any ideas on what could be causing this? Edit, 5 minutes later: I change my condition to use a the Created On date field instead of my order reference, and it now works. I am guessing the Business Rule "does not contain data" has an issue with autonumbered fields!

[@LisaCrosbie]

Yep, spot on, you've solved your own problem there, well done!

[@aruns9334]

This is useful to know but there is nothing stopping someone from clicking on the Receipt tab and filling it in from before the Approval tab being complete. Is there a way to lock the future tabs until next stage has been clicked?

[@chriswebbtech]

Quick question. Can you use BPFs as just visual references? Like can every stage just move from actions done on the forms? Or do you have to move them along manually?

[@anindyakc1]

Is it possible to move back in Business Process Flow depending on Approval Workflow rejection? If so, please can you make a video on that?

[@douglasowen5935]

Hi Lisa, Great work. I want to hide the Email a link and Flow buttons in the ribbon, can you point me in the right direction or maybe you have already done a video on this?

[@LisaCrosbie]

Best way to edit anything in the ribbon is to use the Ribbon Workbench tool. This was created by Scott Durow (he also has a great KZbin channel) - you'll find it here - www.develop1.net/public/rwb/ribbonworkbench.aspx

[@douglasowen5935]

@@LisaCrosbie Many thanks., downloaded and working.

[@binhle4117]

Hi Lisa, if the approval result is No, how can we continue the next stage in the Business Process flow? Could you please give me the video on that, there are lots of videos on your channel, I cannot find the correct video. Thanks for your help.

[@Yatish1307]

Hey, is there a way to restrict backward movement of Business process flow? like moving back from stage 2 to stage 1

[@LisaCrosbie]

Not something you can do with standard configuration but there are some forum posts like this which explain how it can be done with a bit of code. powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Dataverse/Restrict-Business-Process-Flow-BPF-from-going-backwards/td-p/1766718

[@TheTimeLock]

Thanks for good content about Power platform especially Model driven app Could you please make the video about how to generate pdf file from model driven app such as Invoice or Quotation

[@AndyTuke-e4e]

Its a pity you cant change the message in the stage gate saying 'Required Fields Must be filled in"