Smartsheet Approval Workflow with Status Write-Back

Overview

This flow adds a governed approval gate on top of Smartsheet rows. On a schedule it scans a sheet for rows marked "Submitted for Approval", starts a Teams/Outlook approval for each, writes the decision, approver, and timestamp back onto the row as a Smartsheet discussion comment, moves the row to its next status via the Smartsheet REST API, and notifies the team in Microsoft Teams.

Why it matters: Smartsheet's built-in approvals are limited. Power Automate Approvals give auditable, routable decisions with full write-back to the sheet — without leaving the Smartsheet system of record.

Connector-first note: The Smartsheet Power Automate connector has no update-row operation (it exposes GetSheetData, InsertRow, discussion/comment ops, and read/folder ops only). So the build is connector-first everywhere a connector op exists, and uses a single documented HTTP fallback for the one thing the connector cannot do — change a cell value: read rows via GetSheetData; write the decision via AddDiscussionToRow; move the row to its next status via built-in HTTP PUT to the Smartsheet REST API; notify via Teams PostMessageToConversation. The HTTP fallback's credentials and sheet id are bound to flowlibs_ environment variables — no inline secrets.

Use Case

Rows representing requests (purchases, content, change requests, onboarding tasks) need a documented sign-off before proceeding. Operations and project managers get an approval in Teams/Outlook, and the decision is recorded back on the Smartsheet row so the sheet stays the single source of truth.

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Connector	API name	Actions used
Smartsheet	shared_smartsheet	GetSheetData AddDiscussionToRow
Approvals	shared_approvals	StartAndWaitForAnApproval
Microsoft Teams	shared_teams	PostMessageToConversation
HHTTP	http	PUT /2.0/sheets/{id}/rows

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Trigger

To react faster, lower the Recurrence interval, or swap to the Smartsheet OnUpdatedSheet/OnRowCreated trigger if your scenario fits an event model.

Status values & columns

Change the Init_var labels to match your sheet's status wording and column titles.

Multi-stage approvals

Add a second approval (e.g. by amount) before the write-back.

Reminders

Add Approvals reminder logic for pending approvers.

Reject loop

On Reject, send the row back to the requester instead of marking Rejected.

Richer write-back

Add more cells (Decision/Approver/Date columns) to the HTTP body using additional column-id env vars.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

@outputs('Start_Smartsheet_Row_Approval')?['body/outcome']

@if(equals(outputs('Start_Smartsheet_Row_Approval')?['body/outcome'], 'Approve'), variables('varApprovedStatus'), variables('varRejectedStatus'))

@items('Apply_to_each_Pending_Row')?[variables('varStatusColumnTitle')]

@items('Apply_to_each_Pending_Row')?['id']

{ "id": <rowId>, "cells": [ { "columnId": @int(...StatusColumnId), "value": <new status> } ] }

@first(outputs('Start_Smartsheet_Row_Approval')?['body/responses'])?['comments']

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