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Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

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Posted on by a2white

I'm a Document Control Administrator and the company I work for recently transitioned our Document Management System to SharePoint with Power Automate. I am learning from scratch with both applications. I've been utilizing Microsoft documentations, Youtube, online courses, and Reddit. So far I've been able to create a basic flow but it doesn't give us what is needed.
Requirements:
A) Every document requires 2 approvals before publication. First is for content by the departments and second is by me for the ISO format.

i) Second approval for ISO format requires I edit every document for the footer as the date must match publication

B) Require for content approval for submitted items is turned on.

C) Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited is also turned on.

Issues:
1) The workflow will unnecessarily retrigger two additional times.

First = Upon me editing the document for the date as like the user I must check out and check in

Second = Upon me approving/publishing the document within the SharePoint site

I am guessing I need to create 2 more trigger conditions but that is above my knowledge level at this time. I'm hoping someone here can help. Or even if there's a different approach my novice self has not thought about. I included screenshots of the current flow I created, hoping it help explain.

Current trigger condition (only trigger when document is "checked in") Doc Control Workflow 1.png Doc Control Workflow 2.png Versionion settings on the SharePoint Site

Categories:

Building flows

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

It looks like your Flow will begin a new run during the existing run because you are using the When a file is created or modified. We can't use information from later in the form or results from other flow runs.
It may be practical to Use the "When a file is created in a folder" trigger instead:
Then add an "Initialize variable" action. Here we want to call it 'File ID' set it as a String value and give it a simple value like 'needs value from flow' (this can assist with troubleshooting issues).

Once this is done, before the step designed to run after the file is edited add a "Do Until" action.

In the "Do Until" add another "Do Until".
Inside the second "Do Until" add the trigger "When a file is created or modified in a folder" and set up the values to the folder as you had already currently set in your current flow trigger.
Then after this trigger, still inside the second "Do Until" add the action "Set Variable" and select the 'File ID' from the list and make the value the 'x-ms-file-id' output from the "When a file is created or modified in a folder" trigger.

From here we need to set up the "Do Until" actions on the Second one (inner layer) we want to set the first value as 'x-ms-file-id' (from the "When a file is created or modified in a folder" trigger) and then set 'is equal to' 'x-ms-file-id' (from "When a file is created in a folder" trigger); what this means is that the flow will continue to repeat these actions until the original flow run trigger is the same file as the later trigger when modified.

In the first "Do Until" set is as:
'File ID' (from "Set Variable") is equal to 'x-ms-file-id' (from "When a file is created in a folder" trigger)

Here is an example of the first two items:
The trigger followed by the initialize variable.

This is what the two do until sections should look like inside your flow.

Feel free to ask questions I'll help where I can.

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

Sorry, I forgot to mention.
When setting the "Do Until" actions, make sure you modify the default action limits.
Select "Change Limits" and enter a number of times this can be looped 'Count' (default 60) and/or make sure to increase the timeout value (default PT1H) this can be set up to 30 days, i do this in hours as PT720H.

If this isn't changed on both do until actions they will expire at 1 hour from starting.

Edit: sometimes when setting "Do until" rules the second value isn't addable the text box is greyed out, I resolve this by expanding and minimising the actions in the flow until when the "do Until" is expanded it is no longer greyed out.

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a2white 18 on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

I do not completely understand what I'm creating therefore just followed what you suggested, but ran into an error upon testing. The only exception to what you suggested above was adding in the approval action after the Do Until conditions. I've attached screenshots below.
Error message

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

The file content cant be put into the body of the Approval details.
If you show advanced options you should be able to select the file as an attachment, do this instead of having "File Content" in the text area of the approval action:

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a2white 18 on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

I removed the file content from the body of the approval action and now the flow is timing out. It appears to be stuck within the "do until" sections. I waited 11mins and it never triggered the approval.

Heads up; I am creating a new post for the other approval workflow as well.

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

can you show me what the "x-ms-file-id" in the do until 1 action is? It should be the main flow trigger.
also the 'limits' on both do until actions, they may be timing out or over counting.

I had thought there may be a chance that the x-ms-file-id isn't in the same format as the variable we set (string). to fix that we can use a compose action between the second trigger and the set variable, but after checking quickly that wasn't the case:

@a2white Would you be able to show the failed flow run? just to see what's causing the issue.
Mentioning a timeout makes me think it is the limits, but it would have timed out in an hour not 11 minutes..
So some troubleshooting is needed.

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a2white 18 on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

I tried it again this morning and it's working. However, it doesn't trigger when a document is edited and I haven't added the remaining pieces such as 2nd approval, change content status to approved. Which these cause the trigger to refire multiple times.

How would I eliminate the trigger refiring?
I'm going to add in the additional pieces and test again.

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

If your flow is set to run on "created or modified" it will run on each separate change made to a file.
So your change content status to approved may do this, also so may changes made to any other file in the scope of the trigger.
If your trigger is the when file is created in folder it should only trigger if a new file is added to the folder.

If you need it to pick up files getting edited but not the ones that have already bee added I have an idea.
You can make a separate flow that will trigger on created or modified for a different folder where the files would reside, then in the flow have it move the file to the folder that triggers when file is added/created which begins this flow.
Then edits made to files already being processed by this flow will be ignored until the mark-up and approvals.
Once this process is done you can move the file out of the folder, as long as it doesn't go back into that first folder that runs the workflow it should be fine.

[Edit:
It may be possible to control reruns using a control condition against the Content Approval Status:
By Adding this directly after your first trigger, and then making sure the "Set content approval status " (not the one shown here) action changes the status from Submit to something else at the end of the flow.
This will mean all those double up retriggers mid process will go to the terminate action which I've set to cancelled. This method should work with your original flow.

You may need to enable content approval for the list if you're using a list.
This can be done as follows:

You may already have this turned on, but I think it's still good to add it here.]

Let me know what you think.

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a2white 18 on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

Hi J,

Apologies for the response delay as I had to focus on other projects at work for a little bit. The multiple folder option is possible with the Doc Control setup, but the terminate suggestion worked for approvals!! Thank you 🙂
I added in an additional terminate condition for when the document is rejected, however it's still re-triggering. I added it as another row with "or" and value being "Rejected." What am I missing?

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J_Porter on at

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Re: Complex approval workflow - Trigger condition help (I believe)

I think it's retriggering on the "Set content approval status" as that will fill the condition of "created or Modified" from your trigger. If you have the file move to a different folder than the one specified in the trigger as the first action it will stop refiring, like it's gone to a 'processing' folder then perhaps have it move to an 'outbox' folder after the last approval step. you just need to make sure you amend the 'get file metadata' action and relevant links to reflect the folder the file has been moved to.
So it should look something like this:

Let me know if this helps.

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