Many business processes require formal sign-off. While Tallyfy handles task assignments and completions beautifully, you’ll sometimes need Power Automate’s approvals feature for more formal sign-offs. Think audit trails. Complex routing. External stakeholders who aren’t in Tallyfy every day.
Introduction to Power Automate approvals for Tallyfy
Power Automate approvals let you create automated workflows that request and track formal sign-off. Connect a flow to Tallyfy, trigger an approval action - boom, request goes to your designated approvers.
Here’s where it gets interesting. You can use Power Automate approvals for those formal sign-off steps that wrap around your Tallyfy processes. Picture this: your internal Tallyfy process produces a document that needs client approval. Power Automate handles that external approval loop, then updates your Tallyfy process based on what the client decides.
Types of approval actions in Power Automate for Tallyfy scenarios
When you’re building approval flows for Tallyfy items, you’ll mostly work with actions from the “Approvals” connector:
Start and wait for an approval: Your go-to choice. Kicks off an approval for a Tallyfy-related item and waits patiently for a response.
Common Types within this action:
Approve/Reject - First to respond: If sent to multiple people for a Tallyfy item, the first response determines the outcome.
Approve/Reject - Everyone must approve: Everyone has to weigh in. One rejection? That’s a no-go for your Tallyfy item.
Custom Responses - Wait for one response / Wait for all responses: Define custom action buttons beyond Approve/Reject for Tallyfy item approvals.
Create an approval and Wait for an approval (separate actions): For advanced scenarios like parallel approvals related to a Tallyfy process.
Building a simple approval flow for a Tallyfy scenario
Let’s build something real. We’ll create a flow where completing a Tallyfy task triggers manager approval - but only when a financial threshold in a form field is crossed.
The scenario: Your team member wraps up a “Submit Budget Proposal” task in Tallyfy. The task has a form field for “Proposed Amount.” Anything over $5,000? That needs manager approval through Power Automate. Then we update the Tallyfy task with whatever happens.
Approval workflow visualization
This diagram shows how the budget approval flow routes between Tallyfy and Power Automate based on the amount threshold.
Diagram description: This flow diagram illustrates a budget approval workflow that integrates Tallyfy with Power Automate, showing how a completed task triggers conditional approval based on a $5,000 threshold. The workflow branches at decision points to either bypass approval for smaller amounts or route through manager approval for larger amounts, with different colored paths indicating success (green) and rejection (yellow/dashed) scenarios.
What to notice:
The $5,000 threshold creates two distinct paths - amounts below bypass approval entirely while higher amounts trigger the full approval flow
Manager approval happens outside Tallyfy in Power Automate, but the result always updates back to the original Tallyfy task for complete visibility
The rejection path includes an optional email notification, showing how you can add custom actions based on approval outcomes
Value 1: Pick the dynamic content for “Proposed Amount” form field from “Get task details”. You’ll probably need an expression like float(outputs('Get_task_details')?['body/forms/ProposedAmount/value']) - Tallyfy sends text, but we need numbers.
User (UPN): Use Completed By User Email from Tallyfy’s “Get task details” to find the submitter’s manager.
Action: “Start and wait for an approval”.
Approval type:Approve/Reject - First to respond.
Title: Use dynamic content from Tallyfy, e.g., Budget Proposal Approval: [Task Name from Get task details] - Amount: $[Proposed Amount from Get task details].
Assigned to: Use Mail from “Get manager (V2)”.
Details (Optional): Provide context from Tallyfy, e.g., Please review proposal for [Task Name]. Submitted by [Completed By User Name from Tallyfy]. Link to Tallyfy Task: [Link to Tallyfy Task].
Item Link (Optional): Direct URL to the Tallyfy task.
Control: “Condition” (to check approval outcome).
Add another Condition control.
Value 1: Dynamic content Outcome from “Start and wait for an approval”.
Operator:is equal to.
Value 2:Approve.
IF Approval Outcome is “Approve”:
Action: Tallyfy - “Update task” (or Add comment to task).
Task ID:Task ID from the initial Tallyfy trigger.
Comment/Note:Budget proposal approved by manager [Manager Display Name] on [Completion Date from approval].
ELSE (Approval Outcome is “Reject”):
Action: Tallyfy - “Update task” (or Add comment to task).
Task ID:Task ID from the initial Tallyfy trigger.
Comment/Note:Budget proposal rejected. Reason: [Comments from approval].
(Optional) Action: “Send an email (V2)” to the Tallyfy task submitter.
Save and test your flow. Run through a Tallyfy task that hits your criteria. (Check out managing and monitoring flows for testing tricks).
Responding to approvals for Tallyfy items
Approvers have three ways to respond:
Email: Click the buttons right in the email for the Tallyfy item.
Power Automate Portal: Find it under Action items > Approvals.
Microsoft Teams: Got the Teams integration? Respond without leaving Teams.
Sequential and parallel approvals for Tallyfy (introduction)
Need something more complex for your Tallyfy processes? You’ve got options:
Sequential approvals: The request travels from one approver to the next - like a relay race for your Tallyfy item.
Parallel approvals: Fire off requests to multiple people at once. Everyone reviews your Tallyfy item simultaneously.
Mix and match these patterns to build sophisticated approval routes that match how your organization actually works.
Tips for Tallyfy approval workflows using Power Automate
Clear criteria: Know exactly what Tallyfy event kicks off an approval. Know who’s approving.
Context matters: Pull data from Tallyfy tasks or form fields into your approval request. Approvers need the full picture.
Close the loop: Whatever happens in Power Automate, push it back to the original Tallyfy task or process. Keep everything visible in Tallyfy.
Keep it simple: Basic approvals? Stick with Tallyfy’s built-in task assignments. Save Power Automate for the complex stuff - multi-level approvals, external stakeholders, conditional routing.
Integrating Power Automate approvals with Microsoft Teams centralizes Tallyfy approval notifications within Teams to reduce app switching and accelerate decision-making through interactive Adaptive Cards that enable instant approval responses.
Tallyfy transforms complex approval workflows into trackable processes with clear visibility and accountability by providing kick-off forms conditional logic dynamic assignments real-time status tracking automated reminders and organized archiving to eliminate confusion and bottlenecks.
Microsoft Power Automate serves as an integration bridge that connects Tallyfy’s human-centric process management platform with Microsoft ecosystem applications and other business systems to automate data flows and system-to-system tasks while Tallyfy handles workflow management and process tracking.
This comprehensive guide demonstrates how to create an automated Power Automate flow that monitors your Outlook inbox for specific emails and instantly creates corresponding tasks in Tallyfy using the connector with detailed configuration steps and testing procedures.
