TL;DR: Send Power Automate approvals to external recipients via ‘Send email with options’ or Adaptive Cards in Outlook.
💡 Challenge
The standard approval process in Power Automate doesn’t support external recipients out of the box.
✅ Solution
Use the Send email with options action for a quick approach, or combine Approvals + Adaptive Cards + Outlook for a richer, interactive experience.
🔧 How It’s Done
Simple method
🔸 Add the Send email with options action to your flow.
🔸 Define the options (e.g. “Approve”, “Reject”).
🔸 Send the email to the external recipients.
🔸 Process the response in your flow.
Advanced method
🔸 Start an approval process in your flow.
🔸 Create an Adaptive Card with approval options.
🔸 Send the card via the Outlook action to external recipients.
🔸 Process the response from the card in your flow.
🔸 Step-by-step walkthrough: Approvals with Adaptive Cards in Outlook (Yash Agarwal)
🎉 Result
External stakeholders can now take part in your approval processes, either by email response or interactively via an Adaptive Card in Outlook.
🌟 Key Advantages
🔸 Includes external stakeholders in approval processes.
🔸 Flexibility in designing the approval experience.
🔸 Better collaboration across organizational boundaries.
🎥 Video Tutorial
🛠️ FAQ
1. Can I send approval requests to recipients outside my Microsoft 365 tenant? Yes. Using the Send email with options action or Adaptive Cards via Outlook, you can send to any valid external address.
2. Are responses from the “Send email with options” action secure and trackable? Responses are tracked in your flow run history. However, they offer only basic text options and aren’t managed in the Approvals center.
3. When should I use the Adaptive Card method? Use the advanced method with Adaptive Cards when you need a richer, interactive experience in Outlook and want to track approvals within Microsoft 365.
Marcel Lehmann
Microsoft MVP