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Sending an approval reminder (email) to people who have not approved/rejected an approval request

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Posted on by ralmeida_

Hello,

Im trying to make a flow for document/procedure approval (for a file uploaded to a sharepoint, the trigger would be done manually), there are some templates (currently i am using "Request approval (everyone must approve) for a selected file" as a template, i slightly altered it - changed it to wait for all responses) for this which are doing most of what i need but there are two things that i would like to change and have not been able to.

First one: The reminders are being sent to people who have already provided their feedback on the approval request.

I would like to send the reminders only to those who have not replied.

Second one: I need the flow to end after a certain defined amount of time, whether everyone has responded or not.

Ideally there would be 3 Status in the end: Approved, Rejected or Didnt Reply.

I have done some research but i havent been able to find an answer for my questions.

Can you please help me?

Thanks,

Best regards,

Ricardo Almeida

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Building flows

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MarconettiMarco 3,812 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hello,
please refer to the following doc and video:
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Multiple-Approvers-with-Reminder-Emails/m-p/776646#M62587

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mA5wiSusow

If I have answered your question, please mark your post as Solved.
If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

BR,
Marco

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ralmeida_ 8 on at

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Hello Marco,

I am trying your suggestion but i needed to make some changes for my use case (i have many approvers, in the example video there was only a single person receiving reminders, I need to have the people from my list of approvers, who have not yet replied, to receive reminders)

As soon as i have finalized my tests i will provide my feedback!

Thanks,
Best regards,
Ricardo Almeida

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ralmeida_ 8 on at

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Hello Marco

I could not get it to work. During my tests, the person who approved keeps receiving reminders.
This makes the solution not viable, it does not make sense to be sending reminders to people who already approved.

My desired flow is like this:

Person triggers approval flow inside sharepoint (for a file) - Normally this will have a 14 day (2weeks) time limit.
Receivers get request to approve/reject the document
X days later, reminders start being sent out.
If the user has replied (approved/rejected) he is excluded from the reminders.
If the user has not replied, he will receive a reminder every day for the next Y days.
If the time for the approval has run out (2 weeks) the approval will be automally closed.
The requester of the approval should receive a mail with the result (table that i am trying to make below, will include who, the response, the comments, and when the reply was done)
I am attaching below a screenshot of the flow after my changes...

Hopefully someone can support, i cannot find any similar flow anywhere 😢

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ralmeida_ 8 on at

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BUMP

If that is even a thing here 😞

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ralmeida_ 8 on at

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If anyone has any idea how to do this, would really appreciate the support....

Thanks

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DeliD 5 on at

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Chiming in some time later with the same exact use case. I have multiple approvers and like the original poster, I'm my current flow is sending reminders to the full list, not just who has yet to respond.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

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TomCarson-Mee 12 on at

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So I was looking for a solution to this problem the other day and I came across this thread and couldn't find anything else on the matter so I decided to give it a go myself and managed to get it to work! Just a fore-warning this could get quite lengthy 😕

Just a pre-face to this, the only way I could think of doing this is by setting up an authorisation log on excel with columns for: the date sent for authorisation (this isn't necessary but is a nice to have), and a column for the status of each of your authoriser's responses (we send our invoices off for auth with 2 people so for us that was two columns but I don't see why this couldn't be extended.) for us this was just added on to our pre-existing invoice log which is stored in the same SharePoint site as the invoices being sent for authorisation.

*Note* - I used an update a row action just before my authorisations to put an "X" in the status columns mentioned above. It is essential that these columns have something in for when we use a condition to check if the authoriser has responded already or not when it comes to sending out reminders.

Onto the flow: for the creation of the authorisation, essentially what I did was, replace the 'start and wait for an approval' action in the flow with two of the same (one for each authoriser), add a condition with subsequent actions (moves file and notifies me) for if either authoriser rejects the auth (conditions 3 & 4 in the flow), add the actions that will happen if both approve and configure the run after to run after both conditions 3 & 4 have succeeded (i.e. Both authorisers have approved).

When it came to the reminder what I did was add two parallel lines to the 'start and wait for an approval' actions (one for each authoriser again), added a delay to them (7 days in my case), added a get a row function which looks at my invoice log excel file status column, we then use the results of that within a condition which states "if status of auth no. x = "X" then yes) then added the send an email action.

Basically, use more than one authorisation action in parallel with the same amount of timers, also in parallel with the email action afterwards.

Also, If you want to build a log for sharepoint files I suggest using the ID column metadata as it doesn't change for a specific file, even when the name and other properties are updated. This can therefore be used to reference which line of the table you wish to access within your update and get a row functions.

Hope this helps and sorry it's quite long!

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