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Manually triggering Approval flow

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Posted on by admr

Hello I am new to PA world so please don't be too outraged if I ask a simple question 🙂

Basically I have created an Approval flow which starts with a DOCX file being uploaded to Submitted folder. The whole approval process seems to be working great overall, but issue I encountered is when I try to change file name after uploading it into the Submitted folder. What I would like to try to achieve is to enable users to upload the file, makes some changes in it if required and only then to trigger the flow, so something like a manual trigger.

Is there an option to only trigger the whole approval process/flow manually by the user who uploaded the file? If so how do I do that and where does user need to trigger the workflow?

I started with When a file is created (properties only) - but then I cannot find an option to manually trigger it after uploading the file and before going into Start and Wait for Approval process.

All help would be much appreciated.

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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There are two possible ways to accomplish this.

1) Switch the trigger to For a Selected File. This can be used inside SharePoint to manually trigger the flow when the user is ready.

2) Add a column to the library with a yes/no or a choice and use a trigger condition to only trigger the flow when that column is set to a particular value.

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admr 45 on at

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Thank you for your quick reply, with regards to Option 1 - can you explain in further detail how to set it up? When putting trigger in I am only able to choose Site Name and Library Address and then I can add an Input such as Yes/No (when Yes this triggers the flow). Now how does that work with a file that hasn't been uploaded yet to the relevant folder? We assume that new file is being uploaded every time a new approval is needed.

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Here's an article that walks through how to use "For a Selected File" trigger. For option 1 there is no yes/no needed. That was for option 2 which would continue to use your current trigger. Sorry if #2 wasn't clear.

With option 1 they need to upload the file and then when ready start the approval flow from the SharePoint site user interface. For option 2 the flow starts automatically when they change the metadata properties of the file to set the field to start the flow.

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admr 45 on at

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I think you forgot to paste link to the article 🙂

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admr 45 on at

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Okay so I run the flow and seems all is okay until the moment file needs to be relocated to other folder. Basically error is being shown as:

The 'inputs.parameters' of workflow operation 'Send_an_email_(V2)_2' of type 'OpenApiConnection' is not valid. Error details: Input parameter 'emailMessage/To' is required to be of type 'String/email'. The runtime value '"YWRyaWFuLm1yb2N6a293c2tpQHN0ZmMuYWMudWs="' to be converted doesn't have the expected format 'string/email'.

That impacted moving file to relevant folder as per error below:

ActionConditionFailed. The execution of template action 'Move_file_2' is skipped: the 'runAfter' condition for action 'Apply_to_each_2' is not satisfied. Expected status values 'Succeeded' and actual value 'Failed'.

So I got an email saying my file was rejected therefore as per flow email reached me, it's just that file wasn't moved to a relevant folder. I reckon that the reason might be I am using ID as File to move, whereas in my previous flow where I used original method I used Identifier which is now unavailable. Any thoughts as to what I should be using?

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Check the To field in your send an email action. You aren't sending the email to an actual email address. It looks like you are loading a record pointer or something instead of an email.

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admr 45 on at

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I have chosen option to use email address of a creator of this file, the trouble seems to be that PA is not converting that info from my workplace's Sharepoint to email address but to random string sequence. How I mitigated that is that when manual trigger is initiated I asked to put email address of requester in so that does the trick, but last outstanding issue I have is that the file after rejection or approval doesn't get moved onto Approved or Rejected folder. Any ideas why?

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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The creator the file will usually come in as an object with a property that contains the email address. I suspect you are using the object and not the string property. Are you expecting that to happen automatically? Or did you include a move file action in the yes and no side of a condition? Can you share a screenshot of what you do after approval?

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admr 45 on at

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Please see snapshots of my chain, any reason why For a Selected File is not able to take info off my Office365 comparing to my automatic flow where trigger is When a File is Created (Properties Only) ?

Flow (3).png

Flow (2).png

Flow (1).png

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admr 45 on at

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And here is the error snapshot of flow checker. Body on the output message says:

"message": "Failed to verify the existence of source object at 'https://xxx.sharepoint.com/sites/TeamDesign/27' due to error 'The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)'.\r\nclientRequestId: c059cd4c-d693-4dab-aa32-dd149ca9a643\r\nserviceRequestId: c059cd4c-d693-4dab-aa32-dd149ca9a643"

Error.PNG

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