Power Automate

Sequential Approval

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Posted on by schithambaran

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Good Day!!

While creating Sequential approval, 3 Lists were created

- Invoice data extraction list

- Projects List

- Approvers

Look up column set with these 3 lists using the Project Name.

Flow created as per the below:

But noticed in " Get Items" the project output is getting the output with Empty and therefore Approver Email ids are not displaying in order to approve the Dynamic approver method. Please assist.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi,

could you be clear what you meant by the following sentence ?

But noticed in " Get Items" the project output is getting the output with Empty and therefore Approver Email ids are not displaying in order to approve the Dynamic approver method. Please assist.

does it implies that Get items returns empty ?

Also what expression you have used in filter query section of get items ?

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schithambaran 138 on at

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Hi Nived,

Thank you so much for the response.

Yes Get Item returns empty. Expression as follows:

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Ok,

Hi, Just want to check - what is the source column for lookup column type - is it Title column or any other ?

if it was Title column- then your expression is correct. But let's say lookup column source is Finance column in another sharepoint list, then when writing odata filter query- expression should be written as

ProjectName/Finance eq 'dynamic content'

Hope this idea helps !

Mark it as solution if it resolves your query !

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schithambaran 138 on at

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Hi Good Day!!

Let me elaborate my query to understand better,

- 3 Lists created for the following activities ( Screenshot listed below).

MS Invoice List -> This list will capture the data from SharePoint Document library with regards to invoices submitted. Project Name will be the Lookup column connected with ProjectName List.

Project Name -> All the projects are listed here under 'Title' column.

Approvers -> Approvers corresponding Individual Projects are list down here with 'Order' numbers which having the Lookup column connected with ProjectName List. Get Items drafted as per the below screenshot.

Hope this will suffice to understand the scenario. Please feel free if you have more queries.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi

If it is Title column, then it is ok, so next reason why the get items returning empty array is the expression highlighted below may be empty or wrong

So once you run the flow, in run execution results, you will see the value of the expression under Filter Query field.

if it appears as null/empty , then we can confirm that expression is wrong

It should have been triggerOutputs()?['body/ProjectName/Value']

Could you share the expression which you written there- that would help to clarify more !

Hope this idea helps !

Mark it as solution if it resolves your query !

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schithambaran 138 on at

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Hi

Good Day!!

Yes, the same expression is marked in the column. But still the error remains "The request failed. Error code: 'EmptyStepSettings'. Error Message: 'Steps cannot be empty when creating a sequential approval.'.".

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi,

seeing the error- is it coming at approval actions ?

it would be helpful if you can share the screenshot of error in the flow

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schithambaran 138 on at

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Hi Nived

Please find below the screenshot. Hope this will help.

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Nived_Nambiar 18,138 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Seems like new error- could not reproduce same issue in my system - so if i am right- output from get items is one which is causing issue here in approval action ? if yes where the output from get items passed into approval action ?

could you please share details - that would be helpful

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schithambaran 138 on at

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Hi Nived

hope the below screenshots will help out to understand the errors. Waiting your feedback.

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