Please Help - Approval Request based on Sharepoint - Problem with Person Field

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Posted on by Agnes1

Hello!

I'm going mad, I've been stuck on the following issue for over 3 days now. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I am trying to build a flow which will:

In my Sharepoint library, when one of the file properties (Status - this is a choice-type column) is manually changed to (Pending)
A flow will identify the Process Owner for that file (Process Owner (Name) - this is a person-type column drawing from user directory).
Send them an approval request (Start and wait for approval, first to respond)
Within the approval request I want the comments box to be mandatory (but I don't think it's possible, so happy to skip)
If they approve, the flow will update (Update file property) that specific file property (Status) automatically to (Approved)
And send a notification to me, saying 'file approved by process owner'
If they reject, the flow will update (Update field property) that specific file property (Status) automatically to (Rejected)
And send a notification to me, saying 'file rejected by process owner' and rationale (comments from approval request)

So far my biggest problem is with the Process Owner (Name) field. I can't seem to be able to arrive at a dynamic content specific to that one, specific file owner subject to approval request. Flow automatically converts it to 'apply to each' and that causes all sorts of problems when there happen to be 2 files in pending status simultaneously.

I am vaguely aware that I want the 'value' of that field (I think) and it's having trouble because it's a person-type record, and can be one of many values (each file could have a different process owner). Also, most files have only 1 Owner, but there is a handful that have 2 - is this the problem? I think I can overcome this with Expressions, but I don't know about them to be able to build myself correct dynamic content.

If I am able to overcome this first problem, I would also like to customise the layout and look of the Teams approval request (Start and Wait for approval generates both an email that I'm happy with and a Teams request which looks like complete jibberish). But that is currently the least of my worries.

Here are (hopefully) the links to my pictures:

Please, please please, if anyone has any ideas I'd be most grateful!

Thanks,

Agnes

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Building flows

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Hardesh15 7,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Agnes1 Are you having problem with this one?

OR this One-

Please explain what you want to achieve here.

Please 'Thumbs Up' the posts that helped you and 'Mark as Solution' if my post answered your question.

@Hardesh

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Agnes1 33 on at

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@Hardesh15Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to try and help me!

The issue is actually most visible on the screenshot 'This is my Flow 2'.

When you look at the 'Assigned to' field, it's populated with dynamic content 'Process Owner (Name) Email' from 'When a file is created or modified (properties only)'. But the same is true if I use the dynamic content 'Prcess Owner (Name) Email' from 'Get file properties'.

The problem is it automatically converts the step to 'apply to each' but as you can see, in the library, there is only one process owner for each file.

Here's the result: I had 2 processes owned by 2 different people which were both set to Pending status. 1 person approved it, 1 person rejected it. The person rejecting it was faster and clicked the button first. Both files were set to 'rejected' and sent notifications saying 'rejected'.

From this I deduce that I wasn't able to specify one process owner per one approval request. Which I think is applied to 'apply to each' but I don't know how to fix this.

Does that make sense?

Thanks,
Agnes

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Hardesh15 7,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Agnes1 Is person owner column multi-select ? You can store Person owner email in a variable use that variable in Assigned To field.

Steps- 1. Initialize one string variable

2. Use append to string :append person email with Semicolon.

Please 'Thumbs Up' the posts that helped you and 'Mark as Solution' if my post answered your question.

@Hardesh

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Agnes1 33 on at

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I think it is multi-select, yes. Here's what it looks like when that column is being populated.

Can you elaborate on the two steps you suggested? I have very little experience using expressions. 😞

Thanks,
Agnes

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Hardesh15 7,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Agnes1 Here in Append to string Variable Value field pass dynamic person email with semicolon in last. it will apply to each loop here.

Please 'Thumbs Up' the posts that helped you and 'Mark as Solution' if my post answered your question.

@Hardesh

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Agnes1 33 on at

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Okay, your suggestion has resolved the immediate problem - thank you; but it has made no difference to the overall result (which also means that I have incorrectly deduced the source of the issue).

To make this easier, here's my entire flow in one picture.

I tested this by setting 2 files with different process owners to status 'pending' simultaneously. The flow triggered correctly and 2 people got approval request each for the one file they own. First one person clicked 'reject', then the other person clicked 'approve'. So far so good.

And then the flow updated status of BOTH files to 'rejected' and sent me 2 separate notification to say that the each process has been rejected.

Here's the outcome in my library.

Any idea what else I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
Agnes

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Hardesh15 7,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Agnes1 After closely seeing your flow, you used 'Approved' in condition. it should be 'Approve'.

Please 'Thumbs Up' the posts that helped you and 'Mark as Solution' if my post answered your question.

@Hardesh

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Agnes1 33 on at

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@Hardesh15Oh gosh, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!! As a result the second condition wasn't working, so it was writing the same status to both files!

I can't believe I'd done it! Well done for spotting it and thank you for your patience with me!

Here's my entire flow in one picture for reference, only of course the second condition is now set up to 'Approve', not 'Approved'!

Now for the remaining, smaller problems:

1) Is it possible to make the 'Comments' field within the Approval Request mandatory?
2) How can I edit the look of the approval request in Teams? My email request looks okay, but my Teams message has just bunched all of the text into one block.
3) On the Teams approval request I also have 'cancel request' button. Can I please somehow remove it, so it's not possible to cancel request?

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Hardesh15 7,087 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Agnes1

1. Not Possible

2. I think Teams Approval app just released which do not support markup as of now. i am sure they will include this in future.

3. Nope.

Please 'Thumbs Up' the posts that helped you and 'Mark as Solution' if my post answered your question.

@Hardesh

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Agnes1 33 on at

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@Hardesh15

Thank you very much! 🙂

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