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Handling Delay in Sequential Approval Workflow - How to Stop Waiting When First Approver Approves

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Posted on by CU06080419-0

I'm facing an issue with my sequential approval workflow use apply to each action in Power Automate. I have a flow set up with multiple approvers, where each approval must happen one after another. Currently, my flow is set to wait for 3 hours using delay action for each approver's response, but the issue is that the "Do Until" loop continues to wait for the full 3 hours even after the first approver has already approved. This is causing delays in the approval process. The second approver should be notified and the process should continue immediately, without waiting for the full 3 hours.

My Questions:

1. How are others handling this issue where the second approver isn’t getting notified until the full duration has passed?

2. Is there a way to bypass the delay once the first approver has already responded, and trigger the next approval request immediately?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

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Building flows

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David_MA 14,485 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Can you explain why you have the approval action inside an 'Apply to each' loop? This setup is likely causing the delay you're experiencing. In Power Automate, each iteration of the loop waits for the previous one to complete before moving on, and since approvals are asynchronous and can take time, this can significantly slow down the flow.

A better approach would be to move the approval logic into a child flow. You can call this child flow from within the loop, allowing the parent flow to continue to the next item immediately without waiting for the approval to complete. This way, you avoid bottlenecks and improve overall performance.

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CU06080419-0 2 on at

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Dear @David_MA

I have 6 level and save approver as array variable so I use Apply to each loop create sequential approval workflow.

could you suggest me how to create flow for sequential approval?

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