Step-by-step guide to create an approval and automation flow for new Teams in Microsoft Teams

Some organizations have the governance in place that disables the option for everybody in the company to create Teams within Microsoft Teams. With a little help of Microsoft Forms, SharePoint and Power Automate it is super easy to create your own approval- and deployment flow within 20 minutes...

Step 1: Create a Form (2mins)

Create a new form using Microsoft Forms (https://forms.office.com) and ask for the basic information needed; name, e-mail address, Teams name and Teams description. In the example here, I also asked for a justification of why the Teams site needs to be created.

You could pull the name and e-mail address from the account that entered the form, but this would only work if you are 100% sure that the user was logged into her/his company account. So, it's better to be safe than sorry and ask for the First and Last Name in your Form.

Step 2: Create a SharePoint list (3 mins)

Add a new list to SharePoint and add the columns based on the questions of the form and add an extra column with the name 'Status' with the default value set to 'Approval Pending'.

One extra step I'd advise you to take is to go to Settings > List Settings and change the first 'Title' column to ' First Name' instead of just renaming the column.

The result of this action will leave you with something like this:

Step 3: Bring it all together with Power Automate (15 mins)

This is where all the magic happens as you will create a Power Automate flow. This flow will launch an approval process and leverage the new 'Create Teams Site' connector to create the Teams site. The name and description of the Team is based on the form that was submitted by your user.

• Go to https://flow.microsoft.com and click on 'Create' in the left menu and select 'Automated Flow'
• Name your flow anything you want and select 'When a new response is submitted' in the flows triggers and click 'Create'

• After selecting your form in the first field, start by clicking the '+' button and 'forms' and 'Get Response Details'

Next, what will we ensure is that the data from the form is being published to the SharePoint list that we created in Step 2. This will create an overview of all requested teams and their status.

• Click 'Next Action' and search for and select 'Create Item'. Now select the site address and list name in the first two fields. Finally, map all the following fields from the dynamic content box to this action as follows:

• Next, create a new step and search for 'Azure AD' and select 'Get User'. This will help you get all kinds of user information based on the e-mail address that was added. You can use this information later to add the requester as an Owner to the new Teams site. Mind you, that you will need to be an admin, or get approval from the admin to set this part up. Now use the Email Address as the UserID or Principal name like I did in the picture below

• Next we create the approval flow. Click 'New Step', search for 'Approvals' and select 'Start and wait for an approval'. Now select 'Approve/Reject - First to respond' (quick sidenote; if you have multiple people that need to approve this request, you can change this option to your liking). Now, fill out the fields, in my case I've created a standard title and assigned this approval to an admin in my tenant. Under 'Details' you can use Markdown (so no HTML here) or plain text. Finally, you can choose to link to the SharePoint item.

Next, we will finalize the flow by adding the condition (did they approver approve the request or not). Search and select 'Condition'. From the dynamic content window select 'Outcome' and use 'Approve' as the value.

Hold on tight, because we are almost there! The only two things left is to update the Item on SharePoint and to create the actual team.

Start with 'Update Item' for both the 'if yes' and 'if no' condition as follows

Your last step is to both 'Create a team (preview)' as an action under the 'if yes' statement and add the user that requested the team to the newly created team by using 'Add a member to a team (Preview)'

And you're done! Now the only thing left to do is Save the flow (top right of your screen) and test it out!

Here's a full overview of the Power Automate flow:

There are so many possibilities if you connect Teams to the Power Platform. The add some extra spice to the solution above you could also run the flow from a Power App or even a Bot (with Power Virtual Agents) that lives and works in Teams.

Looking forward to reading your reactions, but most of all hear about the stuff that you have created to make your lives a lot easier thanks to the power of Teams and Power Platform.