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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Next Approver from use...
Power Automate
Answered

Next Approver from user input in Flow - in addition to comments

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Posted on by 12

We have quite some scenarios where multi stage approvals are needed. Approval starts with the requestor's manager. So far, so good, we can do that in Flow. But then it starts getting fuzzy. The next approver could basically be any manager in our organization (I'm simplifying it a bit now of course).

 

Would it be possible to have the first approver provide the next approver manually while doing his approval? I'm thinking of a second user input field in addition to the Comments field, called "Next Approver". Any ideas?

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    ScottShearer Profile Picture
    25,331 Most Valuable Professional on at

    @JanKlo:

     

    While, technically, you could ask all approvers to enter the next approver in a standard manner in the comments field of the approval, I would not suggest it.  You could use the string expressions to parse out the data you need.  Then, you would need to resolve that name into a valid user.  My experience has been that users won't format things properly or will frequently forget to provide the required information.

     

    I can't think of a really good way to achieve your goal.  One thought might be to send the first approver an email after they have approved with a link to the item they just approved.  Ask them to enter the name of the next approver in a person or group column in that list.

     

    Another thought would be to have the user enter an approver when they save the item in a person or group column.   Remember that approvers can choose to reassign an approval - if the user picked the wrong approver, the selected approver can reassign.

     

    A much better solution would be to spend some time developing business rules that will allow you to automatically select the second approver(s) .

     

    Scott

  • JanKlo Profile Picture
    12 on at

    Thanks Scott! Think you're correct, we should try and align our internal business rules better so we can fully automate the flow.

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