Approval Process - multiple approvals required

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hello,

I am trying to design a flow as follows:

1. Trigger: Document uploaded to SharePoint library

2. Action: approval process starts, assigned to 1 approver

3. Condition:

If rejected, send email to submitter
If Approved go to next Action

4. Action: Start approval process with 2 OTHER approvers.

Both of these approvers have to approve or reject before notify the submitter and move the file to an "Approved" folder (since we can't update metadata in document library via flow).

Question: If I put 2 people in "Assigned to:" on the "Start an Approval" action, will it make them each an approval to review and respond to, or is it just one, and once one responds the "Approval" is set to whatever that first person picked?

Things tried:

- parallel branches, but the issue is that step 4 will not start until after the condition in step 3 is True. Once I add a Condition to the flow I don't get the option for parallel branches

- Switch case, will not working because both the approvers in Step 4 have to respond before the next condition is met.

Does anyone have any advice on a 2 step approval process that needs multiple responses before moving to the next action?

Categories:

Building flows

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v-monli-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Anonymous,

May I ask why you have to put both approvers in the same "Assigned To" field? Because if you have both approvers to receive the request at the same time, if one approved but the other one rejected, what do you what the result to be?

Regards,

Mona

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @v-monli-msft,
Management would like to have input from both of the Approvers, without having to wait for one of them to get to it and then the other. If one rejects and the other approves, the submitter gets an email saying rejected and who rejected and their comments. I understand we are waiting anyway, but at least the timer starts for both of them at the same time when it runs parallel.

I found a work around for this though. In the condition I first put a sort of "Dummy" Action to get file metadata and then I get the option to create parallel paths.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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@Anonymous Hi BridgetZ! I'm working on creating a similar flow and having some issues but I think you may have my answers! How does your flow actually start? My team uploads a document to a sharepoint folder and then manual kicks off the approval process. My problem is when it kicks off its always coming from me not from the originator of the approver....sounds like maybe you have that part fixed. Do you mind sharing with me?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Sorry, no I never did figure that part out. All Flow emails come from me which is why I only created one for our department and haven't branched out yet from there.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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@Anonymous thanks for the response....

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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I got an email Alias and "Send to From" permission for me. Any email that is created using outlook connector I set from field using alias.

I still can't control From field for flow email when approval starts. That comes from Microsoft Flow <maccount@microsoft.com>.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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What if I have 8-10 approvers for one request. Each approve has to approve to move forward and if one rejects the proposal, the request is rejected?

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kshearly 2 on at

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I have the same problem when I use Switch. I have 2 people in the Assigned to field so that they both get the approval request at the same time. They both have to respond and the system is only taking the first response.

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