Building a Vacation Request App in Power Apps, Approvals without Flow

In this blog post, we're going to go through an overview of Shane’s Vacation Request app. By understanding why he built the app the way he did, it will help to piece everything together.

If you would like a step-by-step breakdown, make sure to check out the video below:

Understand The Functionality Used

First off, and this is important, many of the things you will learn in the video can be applied to all different kinds of apps, which I think gets lost sometimes. So try to also watch the video from that perspective as well. Whether it be the approval process, deep-linking, the controls and galleries, or how the screens are set up. All of these techniques and functionalities can be applied to many different kinds of apps, timesheets, inspections, employee reviews, etc. You may not be building a Vacation request app, and that’s fine, but understanding how the functionality is used and how it could be reused is very important.

The Breakdown

In the video, Shane walks you through building a vacation request app with approvals, WITHOUT POWER AUTOMATE. He incorporates email notifications and deep-linking so users can easily find and approve/reject requests. This is very important from both a functionality and usability perspective. He also includes modern controls to give the user a simple, clean, easy-to-use design.  

No Flow? No problem! By eliminating a flow(s) from the equation, it keeps everything in one place, the canvas app. This can be important when building apps for both internal use and customer projects. If you were to go the flow route, there would then be another tool that would need to be maintained. So, keeping everything in one place, the Power App, it makes things easier to manage.

Important to note: I’m sure you have either heard of or used the out-of-the-box Approval flow in Power Automate, which isn’t a bad thing. But many times when customers come to us about creating an approval process, we like to share both approaches and let them decide which route to go with. One con of the Power Automate approvals we sometimes bring up is that they are less customizable, and sending reminders can be more difficult. Reminders are not impossible with the approval flow by any means, but can require more steps in the flow to ensure they run as expected, which also adds more complexity.

Deep linking magic. By incorporating deep-linking, which is generally highly recommended for approval-type apps, users can hop directly from the email or button straight into the exact screen they need. This is important when building apps where managers, finance, CEO’s, etc, will need to review something. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to find what they are looking for without clicking through several screens and buttons. Deep-links are embedded in the Office365SendEmail.V2 email, so you will have full control over the email subject, body, formatting, and so on.

The app also includes the ability to send reminders, which is a much simpler approach in Canvas apps.

Modern, stylish visuals. By incorporating modern controls and some cool visual flair into the app, you are giving the users something they will want to use. Design and a clean interface can sometimes feel like an afterthought, but it’s actually very important for the user experience. Now you don’t need to go crazy and try to create the greatest-looking app of all time or anything. But being conscious of your users as you are building will help you to create an app that users will want to use.

It’s always a good idea to ask yourself a few questions: “Would I want to use this app?” and “Could I just open the app, and understand what I am supposed to do?”. Most apps shouldn’t require extensive end-user training; they should be simple and straightforward in what users are expected to do.

In a Nutshell…

Hopefully, you found this breakdown both informational and helpful. Again, the full video is linked above if you want to watch it and get the step-by-step breakdown.

As always, if you have any questions or need any Power Platform assistance, just reach out to us; we're always happy to help.

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