@WonderLaura – Laura Rogers

If you’ve ever wanted a way to give your end users the ability to create their own simple automations – without having to teach them Power Automate – Microsoft has just answered your wish. The new Workflows app in Microsoft Teams is a simplified, friendly interface for creating flows, and it’s so easy to use that almost anyone can get started.

In this post and video, I’ll walk you through what this new interface looks like, what you can do with it, and why it matters – especially now that SharePoint alerts are officially being retired.

🧩 What Is the Teams Workflows App?

The Workflows app lives inside Microsoft Teams. You can find it by clicking the apps search area on the left side of Teams and searching for Workflows. Once you’ve found it, I highly recommend pinning it to your left sidebar so it’s always one click away.

Here’s the important thing to understand: behind the scenes, Workflows *are* Power Automate flows. When you create a workflow here, you are creating a Power Automate flow. It just lives inside a much simpler interface that hides all the complexity. These are not the same as SharePoint Designer workflows (which are still retiring – this is completely different).

This is a fresh, modern experience designed for everyday users.

Also worth noting: these flows are saved to the default Power Automate environment in your tenant.

▶️ Starting From Scratch in the Teams Workflows app

When you open the Workflows app, you’ll land on the home screen. You can either browse templates or click Start from scratch to build something custom.

When you build from scratch, the interface is beautifully simple. Select one trigger and one action.

Pick a trigger – This is what kicks off your workflow. You’ll see options like:

• A recurring schedule
• SharePoint triggers: when a file is created, modified, or when a list item is created or modified
• A “for a selected file” or “for a selected list item” trigger (these are great for giving users a button they can click right in SharePoint)
• Email triggers: when a new email arrives
• Calendar triggers: when an event is added, updated, or deleted
• Teams triggers: when a new message is sent, when a keyword is mentioned, when someone reacts to a message, and more

Pick an action – This is what happens as a result. Your choices include:

• Send an email
• Post a message to a Teams channel or chat
• Create a Planner task
• Send an approval request

That’s it! Pick a trigger, pick an action, fill in a few details, and you’re done.

✉️ Example 1: Get Notified When a New File Is Added

One of the most common things people set up as a SharePoint alert is a notification when a new document is added to a library. Here’s how simple it is in the new Workflows interface:

1. Click Start from scratch
2. Select When a file is created as your trigger
3. Choose your SharePoint site and library
4. Select Send an email as your action
5. Fill in the To field with your email address
6. In the Subject field, type your subject – and here’s a fun trick: type a backslash / to insert dynamic content like the file name, the person who created it, or a link to the file
7. Add a body message and click Save

That’s a complete flow! It will now email you every time a new file lands in that library. No Power Automate experience required.

🔁 Example 2: Post a Weekly Message to a Channel on a Schedule

Want to remind your team every Monday morning to post their priorities? This is a great use of the recurring schedule trigger.

1. Click Start from scratch
2. Select Recurring schedule as your trigger
3. Set the time, day(s) of the week, and time zone
4. Select Post a message to a channel as your action
5. Choose your team and channel, then type your message
6. Click Save

Since this flow is triggered by a schedule rather than an event, there’s no dynamic content – but it’s perfect for automated reminders, weekly prompts, or recurring check-ins.

📋 Example 3: Create a Planner Task from a Help Desk Ticket

Here’s a great scenario: every time someone submits a new help desk ticket in a SharePoint list, automatically create a task in Planner.

1. Start from scratch and pick When a list item is created
2. Choose your SharePoint site and select your help desk list
3. Pick Create a Planner task as the action
4. Choose your Planner plan, and use the backslash trick to insert the item name as the task title
5. Assign the task to yourself or a team member
6. Click Save

The planner task gets created automatically the moment the list item is submitted. No manual steps needed.

One thing to know: the dynamic data fields available in this simple interface are limited compared to what you’d have in Power Automate. You’ll see basic fields like item name, created by, modified by, and a link – but not every column from your list. If you need access to more specific column values, you’ll want to build the flow in Power Automate instead.

🖱️ Example 4: The “For a Selected Item” Trigger

This is one of my favorite triggers. When you use the For a selected list item or For a selected file trigger, it creates a button that appears inside SharePoint when a user selects an item or file.

1. Start from scratch and pick For a selected list item
2. Choose your site and list
3. Pick an action – for example, create a Planner task or send an email
4. Give your workflow a short, friendly name
5. Save

Now, when a user goes to your SharePoint list, selects an item, and clicks Flows (or the flow icon in the command bar), they’ll see your workflow by name and can run it with a single click. This is a great way to let users manually kick off an action on demand, per a specific list or library item.

💬 Example 5: A Teams Trigger – When a Keyword Is Mentioned

The Workflows app also includes triggers that are native to Teams. For example, you can trigger a workflow when someone uses a specific keyword in a channel.

1. Start from scratch and pick Keywords are mentioned in a conversation
2. Enter your keyword (like “urgent”) and choose a team and channel to monitor
3. Pick an action – for example, Send an approval request
4. Fill in the approver and a message, then save

Keep in mind that the approval action in this simple interface is pretty basic. There’s no ability to trigger further steps after the approval is completed – it just gets approved or rejected, and that’s the end of the flow. For more complex approval logic (like sending a follow-up email or updating a SharePoint field based on the outcome), you’ll want to build that in Power Automate.

🤖 Templates: Mad Libs for Automation

The template section is one of the most surprising parts of this new interface. When you click a template, instead of just dumping you into a pre-built flow, it walks you through a fill-in-the-blank experience with purple highlighted words you replace with your own choices.

Some templates worth checking out:

• Help me prepare for my day – Sends you a chat message every morning with your meeting schedule for the day
• Get key takeaways from my recent meetings – Summarizes key takeaways and action items from all your recorded meetings in the last couple of days (this one is fantastic if you record your meetings regularly!)
• Recap communications on a topic – Summarizes Teams messages and email communications about a specific topic over a set time period
• Notify a channel when a SharePoint item changes – A simple, no-fuss alert replacement

Here is the template called “Summarize communications and highlight action items“

⚡ Upgrading to Power Automate

If you’ve built a workflow in the simple interface but start hitting its limits, there’s an easy escape hatch. While editing your flow, you’ll see an “Edit in Power Automate” button at the bottom right of the screen. This opens your flow in the full Power Automate editor where you can add conditions, more complex actions, additional steps, and anything else you need.

Just know that once you’ve made edits in Power Automate, the flow will no longer be editable in the simple interface. You’ll still see it listed in your Workflows app, but you’ll edit it from Power Automate going forward.

Note about templates: Flows built from templates cannot converted to be edited in the Power Automate interface. If you need to make changes to a template-based workflow, you’d need to do that directly in this simple interface. Also, scheduled flows created from templates don’t have a “Run now” button in the simple interface – you’d need to go to Power Automate to manually trigger them.

🔔 This Is the SharePoint Alerts Replacement You’ve Been Looking For

With SharePoint alerts retiring, a lot of users are going to need a new way to get notified about changes to lists and libraries. While Microsoft has pointed to Rules as the replacement, rules have a very different set of functionality than alerts did – and the comparison falls short in a lot of ways.

The Workflows app is the closest thing to a simple, approachable alerts replacement that Microsoft has given us so far. Yes, it requires users to go into Teams and create a workflow rather than clicking “Alert Me” in SharePoint – and yes, that’s a disconnect that will confuse some people. But for the users who can be guided there, it’s genuinely easy to use.

🧠 Key Things to Know About the Teams Workflows App

• There are no conditions in the simple interface. You can’t do “if this value equals X, do Y.” For conditional logic, you need Power Automate or Rules.
• The people picker fields in actions are currently not dynamic. You have to manually type the person’s name rather than referencing a column value from SharePoint.
• The dynamic content available in this interface is limited to a subset of what Power Automate exposes.
• Flows are saved to the default environment in Power Automate.
• You can add a co-owner to a workflow from within this interface, which is a nice touch.
• The run history for a workflow opens in Power Automate rather than within the simple interface.

🎓 Want to Learn More?

If you want to explore Power Automate beyond this simple interface, check out the courses available at iwmentor.com. We have training on Power Automate, Power Apps, SharePoint, and more – all focused on helping you get more done without needing to write code.

You can also join us live every Wednesday at 11 AM Central for Power Hour, where we demo the latest Microsoft 365 features and answer your questions in real time. Subscribe on YouTube or request to join us in Teams to chat live during the show!

The Workflows app in Teams is a genuinely exciting step toward making automation accessible to everyone. Go give it a try – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much you can do in just a few clicks. 🎉

Here’s my associated demo video of this new workflow editor in Teams: