The challenge of managing approvals across multiple teams and document types is real. That’s why building a Power App that ties into SharePoint and Power Automate can give you the flexibility and clarity everyone needs. This app we’re exploring today is designed to handle document submissions, compliance checks, and much more, all within a polished, user-friendly experience. It’s built with modern controls, smart filtering, and adaptive form logic that fits your approval process, no matter how complex.

You’ll see how the app lets users quickly filter and search submissions, and how the form dynamically changes depending on the user’s role and the document’s status. And if you want to build your own version, you’ll find downloadable working files to get started faster.

What This Power App Does and Why It Matters

This app was created as a follow-up to a video about building parallel approval workflows with Power Automate and SharePoint. Its goal is straightforward: provide a single place for users to submit documents or requests that require multiple levels of approval from different teams or areas.

Here’s what sets this app apart:

• Modern Controls: It uses the latest UI features in Power Apps for a clean, snappy experience.
• Tabbed Layouts: Organizes document types by department like Operations, Legal, and Compliance to keep things neat.
• Flyout Filters: Users can slice and dice submissions quickly by who submitted, revision date, status, and type of change.
• Dynamic Logic: The form adapts to show the right fields and tabs based on the approval roles defined in SharePoint.
• Real-Time Status: Users see where their requests are in the approval process with both status and history views.
• Easy Maintenance: Uses a single form screen for multiple roles and tasks, so you only have to update one place.

Everything ties back to a SharePoint list that stores the data, and the approval roles are managed there too. The structure works equally well for document submissions, compliance checks, or similar workflows.

If you want to dive deeper or build along, you can download the Power App, SharePoint schema, and flow files from the creator’s Ko-fi page Steph Marshall’s Ko-fi page.

Main Screen: Where Everything Begins

The main screen is the app’s hub. Here you find a gallery of submissions organized into tabs, plus a flyout filter menu.

Galleries and Tabbed Document Types

The gallery is the core list display, showing items pulled from SharePoint. To keep UX neat, the app uses modern tabs to group documents by type — think SOPs, Legal documents, Compliance forms, and more.

When you select a tab, it filters the gallery to show just those documents. It’s a great way to keep data digestible instead of overwhelming users with one big list.

You’ll notice a search box at the top that narrows down the list by text, linked to the same filters. The combination of tabs and search makes it easy to find specific items fast.

Because you’re working with data that’s pulled from SharePoint, you might spot what’s called a delegation warning. This pops up when the app’s filtering can’t fully delegate queries to SharePoint for large datasets. The warning isn’t an error—it’s a heads-up. There are strategies to manage delegation in Power Apps, but for typical business uses, especially with fewer than 200 records, this won’t cause issues.

Flyout Filters for Fast Sorting

On the right side, a flyout filter container can slide out or hide to save space. Here, you can filter items in the gallery in real-time by:

• Submitted By (specific user)
• Revision Date
• Type of Change (like New or Rejected)
• Status of the document

Filters come with clear buttons — to remove one or reset all — making navigation quick. Credit goes to Tolu Victor for inspiring this filter UI design, and you can check out Tolu Victor’s Modern Filter UI video for details.

This flyout approach offers flexibility, letting users control exactly what they’re viewing without cluttering the main screen.

One Screen, Many Roles: Keeping It Simple for Maintenance

A standout feature of this app is its efficiency. Rather than building a separate screen for each task, there’s just one form screen that adjusts to different roles and purposes. Whether submitting a new request, reviewing one, or editing past approvals, the same screen handles it all.

Switching Modes With Variables

This magic happens by setting a variable (varFormMode), which tells the app what mode the form should be in:

• New for new submissions
• Edit for reviewing or updating existing items

When users click the “Submit New Document” button, the app sets varFormMode to New and navigates to the details screen. Clicking items in the gallery sets it to edit mode with the selected item loaded.

This approach saves you from maintaining multiple screens and forms. It’s a practical and time-saving trick for developers and admins who want to minimize redundant work.

Buttons That Do More

The app uses modern button controls with icons, offering clear actions like:

• Submit New Document
• Save (with logic to decide which form to submit)
• Refresh (to get updated SharePoint data)
• Cancel (which resets forms, clears variables, and returns to the main screen)

The Cancel button does a lot under the hood: it resets the form values, clears selected items, resets approval steps, and navigates back to the gallery. It’s an all-in-one reset that helps avoid errors or stale data if users bail out mid-task.

Tabs and Conditional Visibility

Tabs on the detail screen show different information based on what’s relevant:

• Document Details show always
• Approvals tab appears only if there are approvals linked to the item
• Notes and additional information show depending on status

This reduces clutter and confusion. End users see only what matters, making the experience smoother.

You can see this in the formula that sets tab visibility, with simple true/false checks instead of long if-then statements. Power Apps smartly uses these for cleaner logic.

Managing Complex Fields: Multi-Select Combobox for Processes

The app has a “Processes” field that’s a bit tricky—it’s stored as multi-line text in SharePoint but behaves like a multi-select dropdown. This is because the processes can change over time, and multiple options may apply to a single submission.

How the ComboBox Works

The processes Combobox is dynamic:

• Its items are filtered based on the selected document type.
• The options come from a separate SharePoint list that holds all possible process values.
• When editing existing items, the app splits the stored multi-line text into multiple selected items so that the Combobox shows the right selections.

This uses a Power Apps Split function, which transforms a text string into an array of items. Because this triggers a delegation warning, the app creator notes it’s okay here since the dataset is small.

Saving Selections Back to SharePoint

When users save their selections, the Combobox values are concatenated using semicolons and spaces to form a string that’s written back to the multi-line text field. This allows SharePoint to store the values cleanly while still letting users pick multiple options.

This update happens in the data card’s Update property using the Concat() function, ensuring the saved data matches what the user picked.

Reviewing and Approving: A Tailored User Experience

The app includes a review stage where users see approval details, add notes, and approve or reject documents.

Dynamic Containers and Buttons

The Review tab uses containers that appear only when selected, keeping the UI tidy. The “Send for Approval” button is smart—it only shows if the document is new or rejected so users aren’t tempted to resubmit when they don’t need to.

Buttons are reused across the app. The same Save, Refresh, and Cancel buttons appear on both the main and review forms, with conditional logic to perform the correct action depending on the context. This saves time and avoids duplicated effort.

Notes and Confirmation Popups

There’s a notes section where users can add comments during reviews. This app captures these notes and appends them, complete with timestamps.

For sensitive actions like sending a document for approval, the app displays a popup confirmation. This helps prevent accidental clicks and gives users a chance to confirm or cancel their action.

Behind the scenes, the app patches notes to the SharePoint list, combining old and new comments elegantly—even defaulting to “No comments” if nothing is entered.

Enhanced Gallery and Filter Logic for Smooth Navigation

The gallery design is clever for both usability and responsiveness.

Layout and Responsiveness

• Combines vertical and horizontal galleries for better layout.
• Overlays a transparent modern button across each gallery item so users can tap or click anywhere to open details.
• Avoids fixed widths and heights, instead relying on parent template properties and containers to adjust for different screen widths.

This means the app looks good on a variety of monitors and device sizes without breaking or requiring lots of manual tweaks.

Complex Filtering Made Simple

Multiple filters work together:

• The selected tab controls document type filtering.
• Flyout combo boxes filter by submission details.
• A search box filters text fields.

All filters combine neatly with AND logic, ignoring empty selections to avoid breaking the experience. Users can select multiple filter options and clear filters easily.

The flyout filter panel toggles visibility on button press using a simple true/false variable, keeping the UI clean.

Grab the Files and Learn More

If you want to explore how this app works, download the full Power App, SharePoint schema, and associated Power Automate flows from Steph Marshall’s Ko-fi page here. These files give you a hands-on way to understand every part of the app without starting from scratch.