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Creating a multiple approval for staff cover process

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Posted on by TC23

One of the team has asked for a more unusual multi approval step to manage staff cover requests. I've looked at the default templates which has been helpful - but it looks like this flow will need quite a bit more customisaton to make it work as intended.

The initial point of data entry will be a Form which any of the team can access. The process is below:

1. Be filled in by the member of staff stating reason for planned absence / time they will be out (several text boxes to cover all of this)
2. The line manager will then approve (sign and date it). This will be a drop down box on the form of all of the line managers - the member of staff will select their line manager (unless there is a dynamic way for Power Automate to know the user's line manager?)
3. It then goes to the cover manager (person A) to type in any cover implications (if there are multiple staff off that day etc)
4. It will then need to go to the SLT line manager (Person B or Person C)
5. It will then need to go to Person D for final approval (or rejection) and whether it is accepted or not.
6. It will then need to come back to person A to input it into the system and email the member of staff involved.

As you can see this is quite a bespoke approval process with 5 different approval steps. I am not even sure this will be possible as Approval step 2 and 5 are both 'Person A'

I am hoping to get all of this recorded into a spreadsheet that only Person A has access to as well as a Sharepoint list.

This is my first time of dealing with approvals - am slowly getting the hang of it. Any guidance on how to achieve any of the above would be very much appreciated.

TC23

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Nived_Nambiar 18,129 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @TC23

This flow would be a multi level approval flow. so you have to place sequentially one approval action after other.

But i have confusion around, what is meant by the Person A here, is it line manager ?

Could you please clarify ?

That would be helpful !

Thanks & Regards,
Nived N 🚀

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TC23 2 on at

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Hi @Nived_Nambiar

Thanks for the prompt response and sorry for any confusion on the original description.

In this scenario Person A 'Sarah' is the cover manager - who is a fixed user user. Person A does not line manage any of the staff would be filling this in. Here is a rough example of what I am hoping to achieve.

A Form with a handful of questions. So date picker, drop down box for 'Line manager' and a few text boxes for details

1) A member of staff 'Bob' needs to arrange cover for an event next week. Bob will fill in the form and then await to hear back if get approves or rejected
2) The line manager of Bob will then get the request and decide on approve or reject. Currently I am planning on having a drop down box of the names of the Line managers - so Bob then selects this Line manager from the list
3) If Bob's line manager approves this it then goes to the Cover Manager 'Sarah' (Person A) who will then review and approve or reject
4) If approved it would then go to the two SLT Line Managers who will be fixed users. So 'Tom' (user C) and 'Barry' (User D) would both receive the request. If either of them approve or reject the request it would then move the process along
5) If approved it will then go to 'Mandy' (user D) to review and accept or reject
6) If approved it will then need a final review of the Cover manager who is 'Sarah' (Person A)

I must admit I find this quite a long process - but it is what the admin team have requested and I am hoping it can be achieved with some good Power Automate scripting.

There will be a Microsoft team called 'Cover' that will have dedicated private channel where a Excel spreadsheet will be and collect the data. A Sharepoint list will also be within the Cover team.

I wasn't sure if there was a way to streamline the selection of the Line Manager part, so rather than the member of staff having to select this from a dropdown box - it would know who there line manager is? I know in the 365 workspace there is the organisational chart - but this is something we haven't setup yet, so maybe just having a dropdown with the list of all line managers would be a better solution.

Thanks,

TC23

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