I can't see where my Power Automate approval request stands
A project manager using Power Automate approvals can start the request, but still cannot answer the everyday question: where does this stand right now? The request may exist in the approvals center, a Teams message, an email notification, and a SharePoint item, but those surfaces do not automatically become a single stakeholder-ready status view. The evidence supports status-tracking and reminder friction in recent Power Automate practice. The annual cost estimate should stay directional until the time-loss calculation is sourced.
Blocker
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Reviewed by Helen JonesContext
The blocker, in a nutshell
If this blocker is unfamiliar, start here.
Power Automate can send approvals from forms, SharePoint lists, Teams, and email. The painful moment arrives after the approval is sent. A project manager still has to answer which stage the request is in, who has it now, whether the notification was seen, and whether the underlying SharePoint record has updated. Microsoft documentation verifies the approval mechanics and known status/notification caveats. Recent community evidence shows makers building status columns, reminder nudges, and master trackers around approval flows.
Key Terms
Industry jargon explained
Click any term to see its definition.
The Reality
A day in their life
Project manager using Power Automate approvals
I start the morning by opening the SharePoint list for a campaign request that went into approval last week. The item says pending, but that does not tell me enough. I need to know whether it is with finance, legal, or the department owner, and whether anyone has touched it since Friday.
By mid-morning I have checked the Power Automate run, searched Outlook, and looked in Teams. I find pieces of the answer, but not one view I would trust in a stakeholder meeting. The small win is that the flow did send the approval correctly. The painful part is that the status still lives in fragments, so I send another polite follow-up message just to confirm who has it now.
After lunch the sponsor asks whether the request will clear before tomorrow's planning call. I can say it has not been rejected, but I cannot prove it is moving. I update the project plan with a cautious note and mark the approval as a delivery risk, even though the whole point of the flow was to make this kind of chasing unnecessary.
By the end of the day I know what I want: a simple approval-status view that updates every time the flow sends, reminds, escalates, approves, rejects, cancels, or fails. If I could open one SharePoint view and see current approver, due date, last movement, and stale requests, I could manage the work instead of hunting for the status.
The People
Who experiences this blocker
Project manager using Power Automate approvals
34 • 8 years managing cross-functional delivery projects, with basic Microsoft 365 automation experience
Skills
Timeline planning
stakeholder communication
SharePoint list use
basic Power Automate editing
status reporting
Frustrations
- Approval requests appear in more than one Microsoft 365 surface with no single status answer
- Spends time checking Teams, email, SharePoint, and Power Automate before replying to stakeholders
- Cannot tell whether a pending approval is normal, stale, rejected, canceled, or failed
Goals
- Know which approver owns each request now
- Reduce manual follow-up messages
- Give stakeholders accurate approval status without checking several systems
Department approver
Receives approval requests in Teams, email, or Power Automate and may not realise the project manager's central status view is stale or incomplete.
Also affected by this blocker. Often shares the same frustrations or creates additional pressure.
Top Objections
- This will become another tracker I have to maintain manually
- I do not want approvers to learn a new process just to approve requests
- The last approval flow looked fine until someone missed a notification
- I cannot rely on a status view unless it is tested with real approval outcomes
How They Talk
Use These Words
approval requestwhere it standspendingstuckcurrent approverfollow upSharePoint statusTeams approvalreminderescalation
Avoid
Dataverse internalswebhookstate machineorchestration layeradaptive-card payload
Learning Pathway
Power Automate Approval Reliability
Turn approval flows into visible Microsoft 365 status systems that project managers can trust.
Showing 2 of 2 recommendations
Course
Course Built
◆◆◆◆◆Excellent Fit
Track Power Automate Approvals with a Status Register
From checking Teams, email, run history, and SharePoint separately to answering approval status from one tested view.
7 lessons165 minbeginner
You'll build: A tested SharePoint-backed approval status register for one approval process, with request/stage/approver status, due dates, rejection reason and next action, reminder/escalation state, timeout/evidence fields, stakeholder views, and a pass/fail test pack covering approved, rejected, pending, reminded, escalated, timed-out, cancelled, and failed-update cases.
Includes: Approval status register schema · Outcome mapping worksheet · Reminder and escalation message templates · Timeout/evidence checklist · Safe test-record pack · Stakeholder view checklist
Approval status registerSharePoint/Microsoft Lists state modelPower Automate approval outcomes+5 more
Paid course candidate
Blueprint
◆◆◆◆◆Excellent Fit
Build an Approval Status Watchlist for Power Automate
From scattered approval status checks to one Microsoft 365 watchlist with status, reminder, escalation, and outcome history.
You'll build: Deliver a maker-ready blueprint with SharePoint list schemas, Power Automate flow map, status values, reminder/escalation rules, stakeholder views, seed test records, and acceptance tests for an approval-status watchlist.
Includes: Approval Register schema · Stage Rules schema · Status transition table · Message template pack · Seed data set · Acceptance-test checklist
Build brief: Automation · Automation handoff
Approval register data modelStage and status rulesPower Automate approval events+4 more
Blueprint/build-spec candidate
Root Cause
Finding where this blocker actually starts
We traced backward through five layers of "why" until we hit the source. Here's what's really driving this.
1
Why is this painful?
The project manager can send the approval, but cannot confidently tell stakeholders which person or stage owns it now without checking several places.
2
Why does status disappear?
The approval action, notification channel, SharePoint record, and stakeholder reporting view are often treated as separate parts of the flow instead of one shared status model.
3
Why does the flow not solve that by itself?
Power Automate can wait for approval responses, but the builder has to decide what gets written back to the source record at each stage, timeout, reminder, rejection, or cancellation point.
4
Why is that hard for the project manager or maker?
A simple approval sounds like a routing task, but a useful status view needs fields, stage rules, reminders, audit notes, exception handling, and safe testing.
5
Why does the gap persist?
Templates and examples often prove the approve/reject path, while real project approvals need a durable status layer that survives notification quirks, slow approvers, department handoffs, and reporting pressure.
Root Cause
The root cause is not that Power Automate lacks an approval action. It is that request status, approver state, reminder logic, and stakeholder reporting are not automatically designed as one durable approval-status model.
The Numbers
How this stacks up
Editorial assessments based on the available evidence. Scores do not establish demand, purchases or measured financial impact.
Overall Impact Score
68/100
Urgency
7/10
Moderate pressure to solve
Build Difficulty
8/10
Complex, needs deep expertise
Market Size
6/10
Moderate estimated reach
Competition Gap
7/10
Moderate assessed gap
"My teams approval notifications are not coming up but it is coming under my approvals in power automate."
Power Automate user reporting mismatch between Teams approval notifications and Power Automate approvals. — Reddit r/PowerAutomate, 2026-05-08
More Evidence
What others are saying
"I’ve also added reminder nudges, but I’ve run into the seven-level nesting limit, which prevents me from adding a timeout function that reports to a master HR tracker."
Power Automate maker describing approval reminders and a master tracker requirement. — Reddit r/MicrosoftFlow, 2026-04-22
"Worked with both teams to figure out the pain points, mainly being formatting the email, tracking the progress, and notifying when the task is complete."
Power Automate practitioner describing cross-team automation where tracking progress and completion notifications were part of the pain. — Reddit r/MicrosoftFlow, 2026-06-03
The Landscape
What solutions exist today?
Current market solutions and where there are opportunities.
Leader
P
Power Automate approval actions
Approach: Use approval actions to create approval records, send notifications, wait for responses, and continue the flow after the approval criteria are met.
Pricing: Standard approval connector access is available through eligible Power Automate, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365 licensing; exact tenant entitlement should be checked before publication.
Weakness: The mechanism handles the approval lifecycle, but the builder must still design what status gets stored, shown, reminded, escalated, and reported for stakeholders.
Leader
P
Power Automate approvals known issues
Approach: Documents current approval caveats, including Teams adaptive-card status mismatch, abandoned approvals after waiting flows fail, and removed list-view details behavior.
Pricing: Official Microsoft documentation
Weakness: These notes explain why status needs deliberate design, but they are not a ready project-manager status-tracking pattern.
Niche
S
SharePoint approval-status dashboard pattern
Approach: Use SharePoint lists for approval rules and status, reminder counts, escalation contacts, and dashboard-style visibility for pending approvals.
Pricing: Independent practitioner/tutorial pattern; not a product price.
Weakness: Useful implementation evidence, but still requires the maker to build and test the status model rather than import a guaranteed solution.
The Gap
Why existing solutions keep failing
The pattern they all miss — and how to beat it.
Common Failure Mode
Approval examples solve the routing moment, but the unsolved gap is a shared approval-status layer that tells the requester what is pending, who owns it, how long it has been there, and what happened next.
How to Beat Them
Teach or specify a lightweight Power Automate approval-status register: one SharePoint-backed source of truth, explicit stage/status fields, reminder and escalation events, audit notes, and a stakeholder view that can be checked before anyone sends a chase message.
The Fix
What a solution needs to succeed
The non-negotiables and nice-to-haves for any product or service tackling this blocker.
The 3 Wishes
A project manager opens one SharePoint or Microsoft 365 view and immediately sees who has each approval, how long it has been there, whether a reminder or escalation fired, and what changed since the last update.
Must Have
A central approval-status register with request ID, title, requester, department, stage, current approver, fallback owner, received date, due date, status, last movement, reminder count, escalation state, outcome, and audit notes
Power Automate steps that update the register when an approval is created, reminded, escalated, approved, rejected, canceled, failed, or manually closed
A stakeholder view filtered to active pending, reminded, escalated, and overdue requests
Reminder and escalation rules that can be tested safely before live use
A pass/fail test pack using sample records
Nice to Have
Teams notification option for the project manager when an approval becomes stale
Weekly stuck-approval digest
Reusable message templates for reminder and escalation notices
Out of Scope
Replacing enterprise project management software
Full cross-system integration with every non-Microsoft tool
Guaranteeing faster approver behavior without a live pilot
Tenant-wide governance or licensing decisions
Compliance sign-off without human review
Success Metrics
A safe test item enters the register with status submitted or pending
The approval request is sent to the expected approver
The register updates current stage, approver, due date, and last movement
A stale test item is marked reminded or escalated according to the rule
Approved, rejected, canceled, and failed outcomes appear correctly in the stakeholder view
The project manager can answer the status question from the view alone
Solution Strategy
Which approach fits you?
A generic Power Automate approvals tutorial explains actions. The stronger route for this Space is a Microsoft 365 status layer that records approval state in SharePoint and updates it through the flow.
What we recommend
Course plus build_spec are earned. Briefing is not currently earned unless a short pre-build checklist is later requested.
The Future
What might make this blocker obsolete
Technologies and trends that could disrupt this space. Factor these into your timing.
medium probability
2026-2027
Power Automate adds richer native approval status views
If Microsoft improves built-in approval status, reminders, and reporting, the custom status-register need may shrink.
SaaS: Medium risk
Course: Medium risk
Consulting: Medium risk
Content: Opportunity
high probability
2026-2027
Copilot drafts approval flows with status fields
AI-generated flows may speed setup, but makers will still need to verify status values, exception handling, test records, and stakeholder reporting before trusting the result.
SaaS: Medium risk
Course: Opportunity
Consulting: Low risk
Content: Opportunity
For Creators
Content Ideas
Marketing hooks, SEO keywords, and buying triggers to help you create content around this blocker.
Buying Triggers
Events that make people search for solutions
- A stakeholder asks where an approval stands and the project manager has to check Teams, email, Power Automate, and SharePoint
- An approval sits pending past its response window with no clear reminder or escalation record
- A project deadline slips because nobody noticed the request had stalled with one approver
Content Angles
Attention-grabbing hooks for your content
- The approval was sent, but nobody can answer where it stands
- Why Power Automate approval flows still need a status register
- How to stop chasing Teams and email for approval progress
- The SharePoint view every approval flow should update
Search Keywords
What people type when looking for solutions
Power Automate approval status tracking SharePoint listPower Automate approval Teams notification not showing approvals centerPower Automate approval reminder master trackerPower Automate approval status dashboard SharePointapproval request pending current approver Power Automate
The Evidence
Where this came from
Every claim in this report is backed by public sources. Verify anything.
97 sources referenced
Source note
Blocker published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "I can't see where my Power Automate approval request stands", Collab365 Spaces. 97 sources referenced.
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