Approval processes are one of the most common requirements in any SharePoint environment. Leave requests, purchase orders, contract reviews, content sign-offs, expense reports, policy acknowledgements — virtually every structured business process eventually needs someone to say yes or no before it moves forward.

The traditional approach to building approvals in SharePoint has always involved working around the platform rather than within it. SharePoint Designer workflows were complex and fragile. Power Automate flows require a separate canvas, a different skill set, and a maintenance overhead that grows every time a business rule changes. Neither approach gives the person who owns the process the control they actually need.

The new Approval control in Infowise Ultimate Forms takes a different approach entirely. Rather than routing the approval out of SharePoint and into a separate workflow engine, it embeds the entire approval experience directly inside the form. Visible, manageable, and fully configurable by the SharePoint administrator who owns the list. Here is why that distinction matters, and what it means in practice.

1. The Approval Happens Inside the Form — Not on a Separate Screen

The most significant architectural difference between the Ultimate Forms Approval control and every other SharePoint approval mechanism is where the approval actually takes place.

With Power Automate, the approver receives a notification, clicks a link, and is taken to a separate approval interface — disconnected from the original item. With SharePoint Designer workflows, the approver typically navigates to a task list that bears no resemblance to the original form. In both cases, the person approving has no direct view of the item they are approving unless they open it in a separate browser tab.

The Ultimate Forms Approval control renders directly inside the form itself. The approver opens the same SharePoint list item that was submitted, sees all the relevant data in context, and takes their approval action without leaving the form. There is no separate approval screen and no disconnect between the data being reviewed and the action being taken.

For approvers who are not SharePoint power users — managers, finance leads, legal reviewers — this eliminates the friction that causes approvals to stall. Everything they need to make a decision is in one place.

2. A Full Approval Log, Visible Within the Form

Every action taken through the Approval control is recorded in a structured log that is embedded directly in the form. Every approval, rejection, comment, and revision request is timestamped and attributed to the individual who took the action. And that log is visible to all authorized parties without leaving the item.

This matters significantly for two reasons. First, it gives process owners and administrators real-time visibility into where an item stands in the approval cycle without needing to query a workflow history table or piece together an audit trail from email timestamps. Second, it provides the complete, tamper-evident record that compliance and regulated environments require.

For organizations in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, or any sector where approval decisions must be demonstrably documented, the inline log is not a convenience feature — it is a compliance requirement. The Approval control delivers this by default, with no additional configuration needed.

3. Form Locking During the Approval Process

One of the most common data integrity failures in approval processes is the ability for a requester to modify their submission after it has been sent for approval. If an employee can edit their expense claim while the manager is reviewing it, the manager may be approving a version of the record that no longer matches what they are looking at.

The Ultimate Forms Approval control addresses this with automatic form locking. When an item enters the approval cycle, the form is locked for the requester — all columns become read-only until the approval is resolved. The approver retains the ability to add comments and take their approval action, but the underlying data cannot be changed while the process is in progress.

This behavior is configured once and enforced automatically on every submission. It requires no custom column permissions, no workflow condition, and no separate configuration step. The lock activates when approval begins and releases when the cycle completes.

4. Dynamic Approvers Determined by Item Properties

Hardcoding approval routing to a fixed individual is one of the most common reasons approval workflows break. When the designated approver leaves the organization, goes on leave, or changes role, the workflow stops working and someone has to find and update the configuration.

The Ultimate Forms Approval control resolves this with dynamic approver resolution. The approver for any given item can be determined by the properties of the item itself, not by a fixed value in the workflow configuration. The control can resolve the approver from a column in the form (for example, a Manager column populated from the requester's organizational profile).

This means the routing logic adapts to organizational reality without requiring workflow maintenance. A leave request submitted by a member of the finance team routes to the finance manager. One submitted by a member of operations routes to the operations manager. The same Approval control, the same configuration, the correct approver every time — automatically.

5. Customizable Email Notifications

Every stage of the approval process triggers an email notification, and the format of those notifications is fully configurable within Ultimate Forms. The control does not send a generic system email with a cryptic subject line. It sends a notification whose subject, body, and formatting are defined by the administrator — including the ability to embed column values from the item directly in the message body.

An approval notification can include the requester's name, the item title, the requested dates, the amount, the reason, and a direct link to the form — all formatted in a way that gives the approver everything they need to make a decision without opening a separate system.

This level of notification control closes one of the most consistent gaps in native SharePoint notifications, which offer little formatting flexibility and no ability to embed dynamic content from the list item.

6. Automatic Reminders

Approvals stall when approvers forget. This is not a people problem — it is a system design problem. If the only signal an approver receives is the initial notification email, and that email gets buried in a busy inbox, the approval will wait until someone manually chases it.

The Ultimate Forms Approval control includes built-in reminder logic that sends follow-up notifications at configurable intervals when an approval remains unactioned. A 48-hour reminder can be configured to fire if no decision has been recorded. The reminder can then repeat daily, until an approval is given.

These reminders run automatically without any additional workflow or alert configuration. They are part of the Approval control itself, configured alongside the approval routing in the same interface. Once set, they require no manual intervention — the process continues to move forward regardless of how busy an approver's inbox is.

7. An Integrated Appeal Process

Most approval systems treat rejection as the end of the road. The request is rejected, the requester is notified, and if they want to challenge the decision, they start an entirely new process — usually by sending an email and hoping for the best.

The Ultimate Forms Approval control includes a structured appeal mechanism as part of the same control. When a request is rejected, the requester can submit a formal appeal directly within the form, providing additional context or documentation. The appeal is routed to the rejecting approver. The full log of the original decision and the appeal submission is maintained in the same record.

This transforms what is typically an informal, untracked exception process into a structured, auditable part of the workflow. For organizations in regulated industries where the ability to challenge a decision must be formally documented, this is a meaningful operational improvement over any workaround that relies on email.

Putting It Together

The seven capabilities described above are not independent features bolted together. They form a coherent approval experience that is self-contained within the Ultimate Forms form: the approver sees the data, takes the action, the record is locked and logged, notifications and reminders run automatically, and appeals are handled within the same structure.

For SharePoint administrators and IT managers who have spent time building and maintaining approval workflows in Power Automate or SharePoint Designer, the reduction in complexity is substantial. There is no separate flow to maintain, no connector to manage, and no workflow canvas to revisit every time a business rule changes. The Approval control is configured in the Form Designer alongside the rest of the form's logic — by the same person, in the same interface, with the same point-and-click approach that governs everything else Ultimate Forms builds.

The result is an approval process that the people who own it can build, understand, and maintain themselves. Without a developer, without a separate platform, and without the fragility that comes from stitching together multiple tools to handle a workflow that should have lived inside SharePoint from the start.

The Approval control is available in Infowise Ultimate Forms for all supported SharePoint deployments. A free 30-day trial is available at infowisesolutions.com/install/uf. Full documentation for the control is available at infowisesolutions.com/documentation.