three-stage approval flow

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Posted on 27 Mar 2025 13:10:20 by darise

Hello dear fellas,

I have some problems with a rather big flow in my opinion.
The last week I couldn’t make any solutions work and I’m kind of loosing hope.

I put an Vivio like description of my dream flow below just for better understanding.

I created the left flow through an template and just adjusted it for 3 approvals where either one updates the element in the Sharepoint list to an Status of „First Instance“ -> „Second Instance“ …

The flow works and I just made a Sharepoint list which only I can see and filtered it to make the Elements „in approval“ invisible for others.

Maybe some of you would improve the flow, I would be pleased.

My first problem appears on the second line.
I tried to make a second flow which sees edited items, the problem is that the „update element“ flow which I use to make the Elements in the first line assignable and invisible triggers the „an item has changed“ trigger and because of that both flows bite each other, is there any possibility to differ between „new“ and „old“ elements?

I also have a problem with the „get items info“ point, I would like to show the old and new infos in the element, I tried it with that and I have Versions on but I just won’t show the dynamic values.

and for the third line I have no Idea how to implement it, I thought of maybe manually changing the status of an element that you want to delete, then the „admin“ sees the mail and can start the approval flow which ends in setting the status to „deactivate“ and then only the admin will see the item again.

But also here same problem, when the flow edits an item the second line gets triggered.

I know it’s kind of a long question, and maybe even my approach is wrong. I’m a complete newbie in Power Automate and would love many many suggestions to my problem just to learn more about the Platform.

Thank you so much in advance!

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Business Process Flows

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David_MA 12,167 Super User 2025 Season 2 on 01 Apr 2025 at 11:42:51

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three-stage approval flow

If you want to be able to start your workflow over again from the beginning, I do this when I know it is needed:

Add a Boolean field to your list with the default value of no and hide it, which I usually name WorkflowRan.

Ensure versioning is turned on.

Use the trigger when a new item is created or modified.

Add a trigger condition to check that WorkflowRan is false: @equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/WorkflowRan'], false)

When the flow runs, set WorkflowRan to true.

If you need to restart the flow over, just revert the item back to version 1 and the flow will retrigger.

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darise 10 on 28 Mar 2025 at 12:13:31

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three-stage approval flow

@David_MA that worked perfectly, the flows depending on the link are the deletion and editing part of the flow. Those work perfectly now.

The "New Element" Part of the Flow is also working but with a small Workaround because as I know there is no possibilty to start the flow back from the beginning automatically if the trigger is "When a new Element is created".

I just "delete" the Item the Person adds to the list and send him an automatic Email that his request isnt approved and a comment by the approver why it wasnt approved.

Then he just needs to Create a new Element again with the changes requested in the Email. I know its not a pretty Solution but I think its the easiest one.

Greetings!

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David_MA 12,167 Super User 2025 Season 2 on 28 Mar 2025 at 11:55:24

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three-stage approval flow

@darise regarding, "The only thing missing now is a quick link inside of the List to Start the Flow and not select and click automate because the Rights won't allow the people to access that dropdown menu."

Is your workflow manually triggered? If you need a link to start it, you can do this:

Open the details screen of the flow.

Copy the URL.

Replace /details?v3=false or /details with /run instead.

When people click the link, it will open the flow in the browser.

The users then press "Run flow" and confirm their credentials if they've never run the flow.

If the flow is dependent on the item, then this will not work. You would need to add an input when the flow is triggered that the person would enter to identify the item, such as the ID. Then when the flow runs, you could use the get item action and use the ID entered to retrieve it. Since this requires user input, mistakes can happen if they enter the wrong ID.

You could also create a flow with the action when an HTTP request is received. You can read about that here, although because of security, I am not sure I would use it for this as anyone who has the URL could trigger the flow unless you configure authentication settings which can be tricky: Power Automate: When an HTTP request is received Trigger - Manuel T. Gomes

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darise 10 on 28 Mar 2025 at 08:07:08

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three-stage approval flow

Hello again David,

first things first, thank you so much for the recommendation of Shane Youngs Video, this was exactly what I needed!

The only thing missing now is a quicklink inside of the List to Start the Flow and not select and click automate because the Rights wont allow the people to access that dropdown menu.

Maybe you would have an Idea or a Video matching to that request.

Ive attached a picture below, the text is in German but I think that is a lesser problem.

Ive now made two flows according to Shanes´ Video and they work perfectly, as stated above the last thing I would need are two links that open the Flow Formular on the right hand side of the Sharepoint to add the Comment. Do you think thats possible?

Greetings!

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David_MA 12,167 Super User 2025 Season 2 on 27 Mar 2025 at 17:10:51

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three-stage approval flow

One option for this: "Status Deletion Request" starts the deletion flow. I personally don't see it as a pretty workaround and kind of want to add a Quicklink as a text field but don't know how so that's the first solution for me right now.

Create a workflow that is triggered with the for selected item action. You can learn about this through a video Shane Young created on the feature at https://youtu.be/8MSGwXazZRM?si=UcvuULzShSYq4bl1. The one caveat with this trigger is that you must create the workflow in the default environment.

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darise 10 on 27 Mar 2025 at 14:34:16

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three-stage approval flow

Hello David,

thank you so much for your fast reply.

To answer some of your bulletpoints.

Inform creator — when the item is created?-> Theres a loop, the meaning behind is, that the first stage doesnt approve your new element in the list the creator of the element needs to be informed with an Comment on whats wrong.

I think thats clear

New element is created or modified. How is this different from 1 and 2? -> That line should watch over the Existing "old" elements in the List, for example if the SAP Number or something else is changed someone needs to go to the list and change that, this step must also be approved 3 times.

Request to delete element. How is this known? Do they set a value in the list or send an e-mail? -> Right now this is one of the biggest challanges for me. I found a solution by editing the Status of the Element to a set value of "Deletion Request". Through a "An Element has Changed" Trigger with a Filter that only Status should be looked at and an Condition that that change is the "Status Deletion Request" starts the deletion flow. I personally dont see it as a pretty workaround and kind of want to add an Quicklink as a textfield but dont know how so thats the first solution for me right now.

Are the three approvals by the same person or different people? -> All 3 Stages are Approved by different People.

Do you realize that approvals must be completed within 28 days or they time out? How will you handle this especially if you try to do all three approvals within one flow. While each individual approval will time out after 28 days, the entire flow will time out after 30 days. So, if the first approval takes 27 days, the next two approvals including the looping back and forth must be completed within 3 days. -> I dont really think that will be a Problem in my Case because even on Holiday we have a really fast working team.

Do you need to send reminder e-mails to the task assignees? Unfortunately, there is no built-in reminder feature in the approval task, but there are ways to build reminders into your flow -> Thats not necessary. Our Emails are checked frequently and most of the Stages are in close contact at any time.

I will for sure look into the Videos, thank you so much for the first Help!

I hope everything is understandable, english isnt my first language and I try my best to explain it as good as possible.

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David_MA 12,167 Super User 2025 Season 2 on 27 Mar 2025 at 13:36:17

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three-stage approval flow

What you want to do is definitely possible. However, explaining how to do all of this in these forums is not really the place unfortunately. What you want to do is complex. Based on the image of your flow, you are not taking the approach I would use to achieve your outcome. Some tips though:

Do not limit yourself to thinking everything needs to be within one workflow. In fact, it is better to look at the process in chunks. Here are tips for this: Separate flows into smaller automated processes in a Power Automate project - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

First, when you define the flow, what is the action that initiates the process? Based on your image, it looks like it could be one of four different things.

Inform creator — when the item is created?

Existing element is modified.

New element is created or modified. How is this different from 1 and 2?

Request to delete element. How is this known? Do they set a value in the list or send an e-mail?

Based on the above, you could have four different workflows.

It also looks like when a new element is created or modified, the outcome must eventually be approved?

Are the three approvals by the same person or different people?

Do you realize that approvals must be completed within 28 days or they time out? How will you handle this especially if you try to do all three approvals within one flow. While each individual approval will time out after 28 days, the entire flow will time out after 30 days. So, if the first approval takes 27 days, the next two approvals including the looping back and forth must be completed within 3 days.

Do you need to send reminder e-mails to the task assignees? Unfortunately, there is no built-in reminder feature in the approval task, but there are ways to build reminders into your flow.

I would recommend that you review some of the videos by Reza Dorrani on YouTube. He has a wide range of videos on the Power Platform including approvals. His channel is at Reza Dorrani - YouTube.

Best of luck!

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