Requesting help with a form/flow creation

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Posted on by FO86

Hello everyone,

I am new to Power Automate and would like to request some help.

I have been given the task to digitalize the request process at our company, but I am not sure if this is possible with Power Automate.

I am part of the internal helpdesk, and currently when someone requests something they have to do it through an excel sheet. This is a 1 page excel sheet with multiple fields (like name of requestor, what is requested etc.) that has free text fields and also drop down menus.

We use this for everything, so if there is a new hire the manager fills in the details of the person, then selects what kind of IT equipment is requested for the new hire from drop down menus in the excel (as you have option like 13" or 15" laptop, smartphone, etc). However this form is also used to request folder access or non-standard software installation.

The process for this is:

The requestor downloads this excel, fills it out and then sends it to either a higher-up (eg. manager for business justification or the folder owner in case of folder access, or if it something simple then directly to the helpdesk address).

The signature process is done through Adobe Sign.

Does anybody know how to even get started with this? Is it possible to do with Power Automate?

My main concern is the many scenarios and the approval chain.

What I was thinking so far is to keep the same for but have an internal website with different links depending on the type of the request.

But still what I don't know is would this be automated.

Eg.:

1. Someone requests folder access, fills out the form

2. This needs to be sent to manager/folder owner (preferably directly to Adobe Sign to digitally sign)

I have seen there are connectors for Adobe Sign

3. Once signed this should be sent directly to the helpdesk e-mail address where the ticketing system automatically opens a ticket from an e-mail, extracting attachments etc.

What I don't understand here, how would the file (which has not turned into a PDF after signing in Adobe Sign) would automatically be forwarded to the helpdesk e-mail?

Is this even possible to do the way described?

Or theres just a really simple way to do this and I am just missing something.

Thank you for any help in advance

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RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@FO86 instead of completing an excel spreadsheet it would be better to have user complete a form in Microsoft Forms. The flow in Power Automate would pick up the submission and save it to a list in SharePoint together with attachments.Then the start and wait for approval action in Power Automate would send an approval email to the user's manager and also send a confirmation email back to the user with the ID number from the list which is used as the ticket number.

The email to the manager is in the form of an adaptive card so they can just select Approve or Reject and add any comments directly in the email. Once they've done this the adaptive card "closes" so the manager can only give their agreement once.

The same flow would save the accept/reject decision, date and any comments to columns in the list. You would then have a switch in the flow - a type of condition - that looks at just one thing: they type of request. In each switch control you can have up to 25 "cases" and in each one you can specify actions to take. For example case Request Type = "Non-Standard Software Request" send the details from the list item to the helpdesk email including the ID of the item, details of the request and approval info. If the request has to be a PDF then the flow can create the PDF and attach it to the email.

We did this method several times for a range of IT services: procurement requests, software requests, IT Support tickets (over 25,000 of them!), new starters, leavers and other services. In each case we used the in-built approvals actions in Power Automate rather than using Adobe Sign. And using Forms for the initial request works is easy to create and for users to use, and it works beautifully with Power Automate and everything can be done in a single flow.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Principal Consultant, SharePoint, Forms and Power Platform, WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

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FO86 6 on at

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Hello Rob,

Thank you so much for your detailed reply.
I was also thinking to use Forms instead of a simple Excel spreadsheet as it would probably better suit the purpose.

Sounds like you did implement exactly what we would want to do here (starters/leavers, software, hardware etc.).

Also sorry to bother, I would in no way want anybody else to do my work for me but they just announced this has to go live in May so theres a good 5 weeks left to implement this. Bought a course on Udemy and started doing the available tutorials on Microsoft learn in hope of meeting the deadline.

I just have a few more question regarding when the form is completed:
After filling out the form in Forms, is there a way for the user to manually add who does it get sent to?
I am asking because our AD is not always up to date on who is the manager of who and it also keeps changing as there is some restructuring, but usually a worker knows who their manager is, so it would be best if this could be done manually. Not even sure if it can just fetch it from AD.

There is also another case here, some things don't need approval, if the requested non-standard software is free, we usually have it already and can remotely install it, in this case there is no approval needed, but we do need to document this so the user has to send it to the helpdesk e-mail address.
Also since the Ticket system extracts data from the e-mail along with attachments and creates a ticket, there wouldn't neccesarily be a need for a separate ID from Forms as this would just cause confusion, but I am assuming it can be done without an ID as well. The ticketing system we have to keep as that is also our inventory management and packet distribution solution.

Regarding Adobe Sign, I think we have this mostly due to customer contracts, but this is the way the contract for new hires gets signed between the two parties so I am assuming this has to stay as well.

I will try to experiment around to get a working solution like yours for the different scenarios.

Again thank you very much for your help.

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RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@FO86 "After filling out the form in Forms, is there a way for the user to manually add who does it get sent to?" If your AD is hopelessly out of date you would need a question in your form for the email address of the person the approval should go to . However, if your AD is basically up to date then you can omit that question and just use the Office 365 Users Get manager action in your flow and select Responder's email as the input. Then for the To field in your approval email you would select Mail from the Get manager section of the dynamic content box.

"...some things don't need approval, if the requested non-standard software is free, we usually have it already and can remotely install it, in this case there is no approval needed, but we do need to document this so the user has to send it to the helpdesk e-mail address". In this case you'd have to put the approval action inside a case in the switch control. And in the case for free/already available software you'd just have the send an email action.

"wouldn't necessarily be a need for a separate ID from Forms". The ID was from the SharePoint list, not from Forms. But you can always omit that if you have another way of generating the ticket, as long as in your confirmation email to the user you include the ID, wherever it comes from.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Principal Consultant, SharePoint, Forms and Power Platform, WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

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FO86 6 on at

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Hello Rob,

Thanks again for your help.
I'll think I will just experiment around and see if this works (might have to figure out what subscription we have for Power Automate as to not run up a bill).

Why I already afriad I might run into problems is we don't have Office 365.
We still use Office 2016, there not OneDrive (not allowed, at least not yet). Our Exchange is on premise.
And if thats not enough everybody has 2 e-mail adresses:

1. The first one is used as SMTP, for normal e-mail flow in the format of: 'firstletteroffirstnamelastname@com-pany.com' You send mails to this adress and this is the outgoing mail adress as well.

2. 'firstletteroffirstnamelastname@company.eu' This is what everybody needs to log into any Microsoft service, so Teams works only with this address, Sharepoint woks only with this and I have to log in with this to the Power Automate website as well.
So if Power Automate decides to use these adresses as the sender (who submits the forms) and as the recipient (manager), then we will have a problem as the e-mails won't get delivered. Also this second e-mail with .eu is what is in AD as well, in Exchange both are present but we must use the com-pany.com (with a dash in the middle and .com at the end) for e-mails to go through as its set as the primary SMTP.

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