#PowerPlatformTip 149 – ‘Approvals to a Shared Mailbox’

The trap: You assign a Start and wait for an approval action to a shared mailbox so the whole team can decide. The email arrives, everyone sees it – but when a delegated user clicks Approve, nothing sticks. The approval task belongs to one identity and the clicking user is not the assigned approver, so the action tries to complete in the wrong context.

The fix: Replace the standard approval with the Send email with options action from Office 365 Outlook. The actionable email lands in the shared mailbox and any member can respond – you capture the answer with the SelectedOption token.

💡 Challenge

The standard Start and wait for an approval action creates an approval task that is bound to the identity in the Assigned to field and surfaces in that identity’s Approvals center and Outlook actionable card. When you assign it to a shared mailbox, the task is tied to the mailbox identity – but the people who work the mailbox are delegated users with their own accounts. When one of them clicks Approve or Reject, the response is attempted in their personal context, which was never the assigned approver, so the decision does not register correctly. Reassigning is possible, but only manually from the Approvals center and per task – not something a shared mailbox can do cleanly at scale.

✅ Solution

Swap the Approvals action for the Send email with options action (Office 365 Outlook). It sends a normal actionable email with voting buttons defined in the User Options field (for example Approve, Reject) straight into the shared mailbox. Any team member with access to the mailbox can click a button, and the flow reads the answer from the SelectedOption dynamic value – no identity-bound approval task, no user-context mismatch.

🔧 How It’s Done

1. Configure the Office 365 Outlook connection with permission to the shared mailbox. 🔸 Use a connection whose account has Send As / Send on Behalf on the shared mailbox, or set the From (Send as) field of the action to the shared mailbox address.

2. Add the Send email with options action (Office 365 Outlook). 🔸 In the Add an action search box type send email and pick Office 365 Outlook – Send email with options.

3. Fill in the fields: 🔸 To: the shared mailbox address (or the individual approvers – semicolon separated). 🔸 Subject: a clear decision title, e.g. Approval needed: Invoice #12345. 🔸 User Options: your decision buttons as a comma-separated list, e.g. Approve,Reject.

4. Add a Condition right after the action. 🔸 Left side: the SelectedOption dynamic value. 🔸 Operator: is equal to. 🔸 Right side: Approve.

5. Build your If yes / If no branches with the follow-up logic (update SharePoint, notify the requester, etc.). 🔸 The clicked answer is stored in SelectedOption – always persist or act on it, otherwise the decision is lost.

6. (Optional) Log who responded. 🔸 Because the mailbox is shared, add a comment step or capture the responder so you keep an audit trail of the actual decision-maker.

🎉 Result

The decision request reaches the whole team through the shared mailbox, and any member can approve or reject with a single click that the flow reliably captures. No identity-bound approval task, no “it worked for me but not for my colleague” context errors, and no per-user flow duplication.

🌟 Key Advantages

🔸 Context-proof: no approval task tied to one identity – every delegated mailbox user can respond.

🔸 Team-friendly: perfect for support, finance, or dispatch mailboxes where whoever is available decides.

🔸 Simple & standard: uses only the native Office 365 Outlook action, no premium approval task, no Adaptive Card JSON.

🛠️ FAQ

Q1: Why does assigning a standard approval to a shared mailbox fail? A: The Start and wait for an approval task is bound to the identity in the Assigned to field. A delegated user clicking the actionable card acts in their own personal context, which is not the assigned approver, so the decision does not complete against the task.

Q2: How do I read the decision from Send email with options? A: The action returns the clicked value in the SelectedOption dynamic token. Add a Condition (or Switch) on SelectedOption to branch your flow, and always store or act on the value.

Q3: Do I lose the Approvals center history with this approach? A: Yes – Send email with options does not create an entry in the Approvals center. If you need a tracked decision log, write the responder and outcome to a SharePoint list or Dataverse table yourself.

🔗 Related Tips

🔸 #PowerPlatformTip 114 – Send Approvals to External Recipients