How to Use the Approvals App in Teams

Applies to: Microsoft Teams (desktop, web, and mobile)
Article Type: How-To
Last Updated: 2026-08-08

Summary

The Approvals app turns "can you sign off on this?" from an email chain into a tracked request with a name, a date, and a decision attached. This guide covers sending a request, responding to one, checking what is waiting on you, and the trick that makes people actually use it — raising an approval straight from a message in a chat or channel.

Before You Start

• A Microsoft Teams account with a work or school sign-in.
• The Approvals app enabled for your organisation. It is on by default, and administrators can switch it off — section 1 covers how to tell.
• The names of the people who need to approve. Approval requests raised inside a chat or channel default to the people already in it.
• For e-signature requests only: an account with a supported e-signature provider. Section 7 covers what that involves.

Instructions

1. Find the Approvals App and Pin It

The Approvals app is a personal app that lives behind the more-apps control in the left rail rather than on it by default.

1. Select More added apps (…) in the left rail of the Microsoft Teams window. A search panel opens listing the apps available to you.
2. Type approvals in the search box.
3. Select Approvals in the results. The app opens in the main pane, showing the Received and Sent tabs across the top.
4. Right-click the Approvals icon in the left rail and select Pin. The icon stays in the rail from now on, so you reach it in one click instead of three.

If Approvals does not appear in the more-apps list at all, your organisation has disabled the app. That is an administrator setting rather than a fault with your account — ask IT to enable the Approvals app for your account in the Teams admin center, and include your name and the work you need it for.

2. Send an Approval Request

A basic request needs a title, an approver, and a Send — everything else is optional.

1. Open the Approvals app and select New Approval request at the top right. A form opens over the app.
2. Enter a Request name that says what is being decided, not what kind of thing it is — Approve Q4 travel budget — Ops rather than Approval request. This is the line every approver sees in their notification.
3. Start typing a colleague's name in the approvers field and select them from the results. Add each additional approver the same way.
4. Add anything the approver needs in the details field — the amount, the deadline, the reason. An approver who has to ask a follow-up question is an approval that stalls for a day.
5. Select Add attachment to include the document being approved. The file is stored in your OneDrive or SharePoint the same way any other file you share in Teams is, and a link travels with the request.
6. Select Send. The request moves to your Sent tab and each approver receives a notification in Teams.

3. Decide Whether Everyone Must Approve

With more than one approver, one setting decides whether you need all of them or any of them.

1. Find the Require a response from all approvers toggle in the request form, below the approvers field.
2. Turn it on when every named person genuinely has to agree — a spend that needs both the budget holder and the department head. The request stays open until the last person responds, and any single rejection is a rejection.
3. Turn it off when any one of the approvers can decide — a rota of four managers where whoever is at their desk can sign it off. The first response settles it and the request closes for everyone else.

Turning it off is the difference between a request answered in ten minutes and one that waits for somebody on annual leave. Name the smallest group that genuinely has to agree.

4. Raise an Approval Straight from a Chat or Channel

This is the version people actually use, because it takes the request to where the conversation already is.

1. Open the chat or channel where the discussion is happening.
2. Select the Approvals icon under the compose box, alongside the other message controls. The same approval form opens.
3. Fill in the name, approvers, and details as before. Approvers here default to the people already in that chat or team, which is what makes this quick.
4. Select Send. An approval card appears in the conversation, and everyone in that chat or channel can see the request and its outcome as it changes.

Two consequences worth knowing before you use it. Everyone in the chat or channel gets a viewer role on the request — they can see it, but only the named approvers can act on it. And an approval raised in a busy channel is a public record of the decision, which is a feature for a purchase and a problem for anything about a person. When the subject is sensitive, raise the request from the Approvals app instead and name the approvers directly.

5. Respond to a Request Someone Sent You

You can answer from the notification where it lands or from the app, and both write to the same record.

1. Open the approval card in the chat or channel where it was sent, or open the Approvals app and select the Received tab.
2. Select View details on the card, or select the request in the list. The approval form opens with the title, the details, and any attached file.
3. Open the attachment and read it before deciding. The requester's summary is their account of what they are asking for.
4. Choose to approve or reject the request using the action buttons at the bottom of the form. Where the sender configured custom responses, these buttons carry their wording instead — for example Sign off and Send back.
5. Add a comment explaining the decision, particularly for a rejection. A rejection with no comment sends the request straight back to you as a question.
6. Confirm your response. The card and the app both update to show the decision, who made it, and when.

A response cannot be edited once submitted, because the record is the point of the app. If you responded in error, tell the requester and ask them to send a fresh request.

6. Track What You Sent and What Is Waiting on You

The two tabs at the top of the app are the whole tracking system.

1. Open the Approvals app and select the Received tab to see every request awaiting your decision, including ones that arrived through a chat, a channel, or an automated workflow.
2. Select the Sent tab to see everything you have raised, with its current status and who has responded so far.
3. Select a request in either list to see the full history — the details as sent, each response, and any comments.
4. To withdraw a request that is still open, select it in the Sent tab and choose the Cancel option. Cancelling stops the approvers from responding and marks the request cancelled; it does not erase it from the history, and you can send a corrected request immediately afterwards. Requests already decided cannot be cancelled.

7. Request an E-Signature Approval

An e-signature request is a different thing from an approval, and it depends on what your organisation has licensed.

1. Start a new request in the Approvals app and look for the e-signature request type among the options offered.
2. Choose your e-signature provider. Teams supports third-party providers including DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat Sign, and your administrator controls which of them appear.
3. Sign in to that provider when prompted, attach the document, and name the signers.
4. Track the request from the Approvals app, which shows the current status as the signers act on it.

The honest note: this route needs a licence for the specific e-signature provider, held by your organisation or by you. Without one, the option is absent or stops at the sign-in step, and no amount of retrying changes that. If your work genuinely needs signatures, ask IT whether the organisation holds a DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign licence and whether your account can be added to it. Signed documents are stored in that provider's system rather than in Microsoft 365.

8. Understand What an Approval Is and Is Not

Knowing the limits of the record keeps it useful and stops it being relied on for the wrong thing.

An approval is a timestamped record that a named person approved or rejected a specific request, with their comments attached. Your organisation retains it, and it is enough evidence for most internal sign-off — a purchase, a document release, a change to a process, a day off.

An approval is not a signature and not a contract. It carries no legal weight of its own, and nothing about it verifies identity beyond the fact that someone signed in to that Teams account. Anything that needs to hold up outside your organisation belongs in an e-signature request or a real contract process.

The history is visible to the people involved. The requester and the approvers see the request and every response. Anyone who was in the chat or channel where it was raised sees it too. Nobody else does — a colleague cannot browse other people's approvals.

If you need something more than a single request — a sign-off that fires automatically whenever a file lands in a library, or a two-stage chain where the second approver only sees it after the first agrees — that is a workflow, and it is built in Power Automate. See How to Use SharePoint Approval Workflows with Power Automate for that route.

Troubleshooting

INFO

Requests raised from a chat or channel are visible to everyone in that conversation, not only to the approvers. Teams grants every participant a viewer role on the request, so the decision and its comments sit in the channel record. For anything concerning a person, a salary, or a complaint, raise the request from the Approvals app and name the approvers directly.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Approvals does not appear in the more-apps list	Administrator has disabled the app for the organisation	Ask IT to enable the Approvals app for your account in the Teams admin center, and include your name and what you need it for.
The approver says they never received it	Notification missed, or they are looking in the wrong place	Ask them to open the Approvals app and check the Received tab. Every request lands there regardless of where it was sent from.
The request completed after one person responded	Require a response from all approvers was left off	Send a new request with the toggle on. The setting cannot be changed on a request already sent.
No e-signature option in the request form	Organisation holds no licence for a supported provider, or the administrator disabled it	Ask IT whether the organisation licenses DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign, and whether your account can be added.
I approved the wrong request	Responses are final once submitted	Tell the requester immediately and ask them to cancel and resend. The original response stays in the history as a record.
The Cancel option is missing on a sent request	The request has already been decided	Only requests still in progress can be cancelled. Send a new request that supersedes it, and say so in the details.
An attached file will not open for an approver	The file link is scoped to the original recipients	Reshare the file to that person directly, or move it to a channel everyone involved belongs to.

Related Articles

• How to Use SharePoint Approval Workflows with Power Automate
• How to Use Power Automate Basics in Microsoft 365
• How to Add Apps, Tabs, and Files to a Teams Channel
• Understanding Chats, Channels, and Teams in Microsoft Teams

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