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Which Approval Should I use?

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Posted on by CP153319

I haven't built a new approval in a few months but now I must create a new one. I noticed today that there are now 4 different approval types to choose from. I went through them and read their description but I'm still not sure which one I should pick for my application. What I'm doing basically is adding an item to a list and having that item approved by one approver-at-a-time in a hierarchy. If it makes it past the first approveer it goes on to the next and so on...

I'd love to see something from Microsoft like this:

- If you need your approval to do this then pick Approval Type 1

- If you need your approval to do that then pick Approval Type 2

-If you need your approval to create this and that pick Approval Type 3

If anyone has any links to resources describing these 4 approval types or just some general advice I'd appreciate it.

Thank you

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Building flows

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @CP153319 ,

There is currently no specific documentation for new Approval action to illustrate it, but the previous logic still works, and it extends some features to cover more scenarios.

Please refer to this blog for a new feature on the Approval action.

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-custom-response-options-for-approvals/

Basically, Create an approval (V2) action and Wait for an approval (V2) action split Create approval and wait for response in Start and wait for an approval (V2) action.

The commonly used ones are Start and wait for an approval action and Start and wait for an approval (V2) action.

If your plan supports you using Premium feature, you could also customize Response, which is no longer limited to Approve and Reject.

Let us focus on Approval Flow you want to create.

If Approver does not have a sequence of approvals, but only need all Approvers approve, you could use Start and wait for an approval action directly.

Approval type is set to Everyone must approve, and then the process of configuration is no different from the previous Approval action.

If Approver does not have a sequence of approvals, it need to perform the next approval process after the previous approver approval is completed, then you could refer to Sequential approvals.

Only the Approval type needs to be set to First to respond, and the other steps are still similar.

To sum up, the new feature has no other effect on configuring Approval action. If you don't want to use the new feature, you could ignore them. Start and wait for an approval action is the closest to the previous Start an approval action and is recommended.

If you have any questions, please feel free let me know.

Best Regards,

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ck25415 294 on at

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@v-bacao-msft ,

Could you please let me know if we need flow plan1 or plan 2?. Also does everyone need premium license or just the flow creator ?

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CP153319 on at

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I found out the answer to this today by mistake and think I can explain it so it makes sense:

There are a couple of ways to do approvals - One way is with the Yes/No condition right after the approval action and another is to just capture the results of the approval without the Yes/No condition.

Which should you use?:

Use "Create An Approval" only when you are going to use a (yes/no) condition right after it. The condition after it forces the Flow to wait until the person approves or rejects the approval. If you use "Create An Approval" without a condition after it then the Flow will cycle through each of the actions after the Approval action and never capture the results of the approval. Not good.

Use "Start And Wait For An Approval" when you are not going to use a condition after it. In this case the approval will not move on to the next action in the Flow until the approvals have been completed. You would use this version of the approval action when you are going to use variables in your Flow to capture approval details. @ScottShearer has a blog where he shows how to do an approval like this using the Scope action which really simplifies how one can create an approval without multiple yes/no conditions.

So, in closing, "Create An Approval" does not wait for the approval to be completed before it moves to the next action in the Flow.
Start and Wait for an Approval will not move to the next action in the Flow until all the necessary approvals have taken place.

If you are unsure of what to use please choose "Start And Wait For An Approval" - You can't go wrong with that one.

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necik

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Description Start and Wait for an approval Create an Approval

Creates records in CDS	Yes	Yes
Basic email notifications (including actionable email) and push notifications to the Flow Mobile app	Yes	Yes
Responses/comments available as outputs	Yes	No, use Wait for an Approval to use these in the Flow.
Step outputs an adaptive card that can be posted to Microsoft Teams	No, the approval is already complete after this step completes.	Yes