Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi everyone,

I've designed an approval flow in Power Automate using the "Start and wait for an approval" action. The flow includes an internal approver (A) and an external guest approver (B).

After the approval is initiated, the flow runs without any errors and successfully reaches the "Start and wait for an approval" step.

However, we've observed the following issues:

1. Guest approver does not appear in the Teams approval step. Even after all internal approvers have approved and the flow moves to the guest approver, Teams only shows the status as "Requested" – but it doesn't indicate which guest user the approval has been assigned to. This is confusing, especially for users who aren't familiar with the setup, as they might assume the flow has completed.

2. Guest approver does not receive the approval email. Typically, approvers receive an automated email from Power Automate when action is required. Our internal approver
receives this email without any issues, but the external guest (B) never gets it.

3. Personal email account works fine. We tested with a personal email account (C) as a guest approver. After accepting the invitation, this guest appeared correctly in the Teams approval step and successfully received the approval email.

4. Potential geographic restriction? We're wondering if this could be region-related. Our internal approver (A) is located in China, the external guest (B) is in the United States, and the personal account (C) we tested with is also in China.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues with external guest approvers not receiving emails or not showing up in Teams? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Categories:

Using connectors

Building flows

Using flows

Hi there!

I think there are a handful of "known issues" published by Microsoft. Here's what I would do if this was my approval process:

1) Internals ~ use internal approval flows.

2) Externals ~ after your internal approvals to through, continue the flow and use 'send email with options' and give your externals Approve or Reject.

That's not perfect but stable.

Known issues page: Known issues - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

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Tom

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