How to manage parallel branches and showing flow runs as successful

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Posted on by RM-30040732-0

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Hello!

I wonder if someone could advise the best method to stop my flow run from showing as "failing" when in fact it has run successfully down one branch? Can I clear this simply with a terminate action at the end of my alternative branch? The actions show as Skipped but I would expect them to when the Approval step at the top of that branch has timed out.

For example my flow status shows this:

But within my flow I am happy that it met the requirements to run successfully - where there are parallel branches - one delayed for 7 days to account for the approval step in the opposite branch timing out.

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Building flows

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developerAJ 4,763 on at

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Configuring Conditional Branches After “Wait for Approval” in Power Automate
Success Branch:
Add an Apply to each action to process and store comments from the approval.
Configure the Run After settings to execute only when the approval is successful.
Timeout/Failure Branch:
Add a parallel branch with a Compose action containing the desired text.
Configure the Run After settings to execute only when the approval times out or fails.

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RM-30040732-0 545 on at

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Thanks although that unfortunately leaves me with the same issue - the flow run shows as Failed when following one of the branches as the other side is showing as skipped.

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Tomac 4,061 Moderator on at

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Hi @RM-30040732-0

After your Condition on the left side

Add a Compose action. Set the Run After to the following:

For the Inputs of the Compose, put any plain text. It doesn't matter since this is a dummy action that we just need to run. Whether or not your Condition runs, fails, or is skipped, the Compose will now run and your flow won't end in Failed state.

Note that this can mask an issue inside of that Condition action, so you may want to account for that case.

What's happening is that the last thing Power Automate knows in that branch is a failure - we need to put something there to tell Power Automate "It's ok that there was a failure, keep going"

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David_MA 14,499 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I am not sure based on your description, but are the actions on the right side of the parallel branch designed to take care of what happens if the approval is not completed within seven days? If so, you could handle this differently. This is how I handle this normally:

In this example, the approval needs to be completed within 14 days. I set the duration in the Wait for an approval action to P14D so it times out after 14 days:

Then the first two actions under wait for approval have the run after set up as;

If the approval times out, I delete the approval, so it no longer shows in the approver's received view.

While I show terminate actions at the end of both parallel branches, you would not need these based on what you are doing. They are to stop the reminders e-mails that go out every day in the Do until branch that comes after the Create an approval action. I don't even really need them in my flow, but without them the flow will keep running until the delay within the do until passes to check of the approval has been completed or timed out. It just terminates the flow faster than having to wait for the end of the delay.

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