How can I access Power Apps or Power Automate in a SharePoint Server 2019 On Premise environment?

Question

Greetings,

I would like to create an approval workflow for my companies SharePoint site. One that will allow a signed pdf document to be sent to an employee's supervisor for review. I've done approval flows via power automate in SharePoint online in the past however the tricky part for me is that in my new company we currently use a SharePoint Server 2019 On Premise environment. They do not want to connect to office 365. What would be the process for getting access to Power Automate and if it's not feasible is there a way to create an approval workflow in sharepoint server 2019 without using power apps/automate?

Answer 1

You could create a data gateway to act as a bridge to provide quick and secure data transfer between on-premises data (data that isn't in the cloud) and several Microsoft cloud services. These cloud services include Power BI, PowerApps, Power Automate, Azure Analysis Services, and Azure Logic Apps. By using a gateway, organizations can keep databases and other data sources on their on-premises networks, yet securely use that on-premises data in cloud services.

References:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/support-for-sharepoint-on-premises/

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Answer 2

Power Apps and Power Automate are cloud-based services that are part of the Microsoft Power Platform. They are not natively available in a SharePoint Server 2019 On Premise environment. However, there are a few options to consider:

1. Connect your SharePoint Server 2019 On Premise environment to Office 365. This will allow you to use Power Apps and Power Automate, as well as other Office 365 services.
2. Use SharePoint Designer, which is a tool that can be used to create workflows in SharePoint On Premise environments. You can use SharePoint Designer to create an approval workflow for your signed pdf document.

Additionally, you can also look into SharePoint Workflow Manager 2019 which is an On-premises Workflow engine to create and manage SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 Workflows.