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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Request approval (ever...
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Request approval (everyone must approve) for a selected file

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Hello All,

 

As the Microsoft default template is not working for the (Request approval (everyone must approve) for a selected file - Template). I have created my own. 

 

But here I need some help, when reminder part comes, It's sending reminders to the all the approvers (including approved users as well). Like I have 4 approvers in that 3 approved only one still pending then if I take reminder time as 1 Day it's sending reminders to all the 4 approvers after a day.

 

Can anyone help on this as soon as possible? It's really a big headache to the users.

 

Note: I would like to replace the OOTB 2010 approval workflow for a selected item. Any other leads also much appriciated.

 

Thanks,

Saan

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  • ChadVKealey Profile Picture
    1,393 on at

    Can you post a screenshot of the flow, particularly how you have the reminder loop configured? I've not set up any multi-approver processes with reminders, but if your flow is creating one approval "assigned to" multiple people, then it makes sense that the reminder would send to all of them (since there's only one approval and it's not complete). 

  • Saan Profile Picture
    on at

    Please find the screenshot:

     

    Saan_0-1609744152314.png

    Saan_1-1609744172944.png

     

    Saan_3-1609744235634.png

     

  • Saan Profile Picture
    on at

     I understand : i have took the approvers from the trigger body to send an email notification. But not sure how to eliminate approvers from the list of approvers who approved already.

     

    Also this flow sending reminder once every approver approves it's sending reminder emails with out considering the duration that mentioned while running the flow. This is one more strange part.

     

    Thanks,

    Saan

  • ChadVKealey Profile Picture
    1,393 on at

    There is another issue currently that's causing any open approvals to resend daily. The exact time varies from one person to another (I receive mine at 4:29 PM EST every day). Allegedly, MS is aware of this and working on a fix. 

     

    In regard to your particular issue, to send reminders to only those Approvers that have not responded, there are a couple options I can think of, but I'm not sure how to fully implement either, so also not sure which would be easier to put in place. So, in no particular order:

     

    Option A: Create an array of the approver email addresses before assigning the Approval, then - when one of them responds - remove their email from that array. However, I don't think this would work for the type of approval you're creating (Everyone must approve) because the "Wait for an approval" will (I believe) not trigger until ALL of the approvers have responded. I could be wrong on that; have not tested it or implemented any such approval flows.

     

    Option 2: Generate a separate approval for each approver. In this case, you'd want to create an array of Approvers and create those Approvals inside of an "Apply to each" loop which will run for each item in that array. The reminder loop would be inside that same loop. Like the previous option, this wouldn't work directly with the "Everyone must approve" approval option you're using. To achieve the same behavior, you'd need to:

    1. create an integer variable for the number of approvers (e.g.: 4)
    2. when an approval is completed - and approved - decrement that variable by one; but what happens if it's rejected? You'd need to think that through
    3. when the variable reaches zero, the flow would move on from the approval stage

    This approach actually gives you a bit more flexibility. Say, for example, you wanted to go by the majority response. You could use variables to count the number of Approves and Rejects and whichever is higher would determine the outcome. I'd suggest reading this blog post from Doctor Flow (Serge Luca) on that topic: https://sergeluca.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/microsoft-flow-majority-pattern-approval/

     

     

  • Saan Profile Picture
    on at

    Can you please give more insight on this, am unable to follow and am new to this environment too..

     

    Any sample flow with the actions like shown in the above link(blog)

  • jinivthakkar Profile Picture
    4,187 on at

    Hi Saan,

     

    Please try this, before you start the approval, get all approver email ID's separated by semi-colon in a variable.

    and after you start an approval you can apply to each and get approver email ID's whoever has responded and then just do the replace operation as shown below and which can be used to send reminder emails as required(which will just have email ID's of the users who did not respond to the approval flow)

     

    jinivthakkar_0-1609855750527.png

     

    Expression: 

    replace(variables('varEmailIds'),variables('varReplace'),'')

     

    Hope this helps, please accept the solution if this helps.

     

  • ChadVKealey Profile Picture
    1,393 on at

    What you want to achieve is complicated. Not impossible, but not easy to do. The main issue is that with the "Everyone must approve" approval option selected in the Create approval action, the "Wait for approval" step won't fire until ALL of the specified approvers have responded. So, there is no way for the flow to know who has responded and who hasn't.

     

    I've spent most of the morning trying to find a way to do this in one flow and if there is, I'm not smart enough to figure it out. To solve a similar issue last year, I created a solution using two different flows and a separate SharePoint list to track the approvals. 

     

    The first flow is run manually with the Approvers being entered as Inputs to the trigger (for a selected item in SharePoint). For each of the Approvers, that flow creates an item in the second SP list. That list has columns for the Approver (person type column), RequestID (item id of the item from the first list, so the approval can be matched back to the request), and status (pending, approved, rejected, or timed out). The second flow - which runs when those "approval" items are created in the second list - creates a single (Power Automate) Approval object assigned to the Approver. That flow includes a reminder loop (daily in this case). When the Approval is completed (or times out), the flow updates data in the first list by incrementing either the "ApproveCount" or "RejectCount" (number columns). 

     

    It's complicated, but does what the client needed to do. 

     

    Power Automate is a fantastic toolbox, but you sometimes need to get creative with the tools provided.

  • SharonR Profile Picture
    78 on at

    sounds very complicated.  It may be a fantastic tool but if end users cant figure it out - its useless.  It took me weeks to figure out how to create an approval flow and now i see there is no task list!  Do you know how i can create a list to show where my approvers are in the process?  If one person does not approval and is holding up the process i have no idea how to figure out who that is.  

  • ChadVKealey Profile Picture
    1,393 on at

    For formalized approvals (where auditing/tracking is required), I create a sort of "transaction log" list in SharePoint. It's basically the same idea as the "Workflow Tasks" list in SharePoint 2010/2013: columns for the "title" of the action, the name/ID of the file or item that is the subject of the process (ie: the thing that's being sent for approval), along with some time stamps, outcome, and the approval info (ID, response link, etc.). You need to decide what actions you want to log and then use a "create item" step in your flow to record those events. In the end, this is more useful than the Workflow Tasks list was in older versions of SharePoint since you have a lot more flexibility as to what gets written and when.

  • SharonR Profile Picture
    78 on at

    Where do i create the item step?  is it after the start and wait for an approval?  Will it capture the tracking for each person in the list of approvers?  Do you have any samples of what the flow would look like?

     

    SharonR_0-1651601802628.png

     

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