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Looking to have Approval Flow start after rejection

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Posted on by OzHamid

Hello,

I am trying to figure out a way to have an Approval restart after it has been rejected. For example, an item is submitted to sharepoint for approval and is reviewed by the approver. The approver may reject it and note to the submitter that they just need to change something minor (or what have you) for it to be approved. Now, I don't want the flow to end, I want it to wait for a specific period of time and check to see if the item was modified by the submitter (meaning, they went back and changed what they needed to). Once it sees that change, it should resend the approval to the approver for review. Does anyone have any experience with this/know how to do this?

Thanks!

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Using flows

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vecerpa 786 on at

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I'm also interested in this. Is there some solution?
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v-xida-msft on at

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Hi @OzHamid,

How do you want to do if the second approval email (after changing what they need to) is also rejected by the approver?

I have created a SharePoint list on my side and the data structure of it as below:

Note: The TaskName column and Executor column are both Single line of text type column, Due Date column is a Date type column, ApprovalStatus column is a Choice type column (available value: "Approved" or "Rjected") and the default value of it is null. The Last Modified Time column is a Date type column, which is used to store the last modification time of the item.

I have made a test on my side and please take a try with the following workaround:

Add a "When an item is created" trigger.

Add a "Start an approval" action, specify Assigned to field.

Add a "Condition", left input box set to Response dynmaic content of "Start an approval" action, right input box set to Approve, within middle drop down, choose is equal to.

Within "If/yes" branch of Condition, add a "Update item" action, ApprovalStatus Value field set to Approved, Last Modified Time field set to Modified dynamic content of the trigger.

Within "If/no" branch of Condition, add a "Send an email" action to notify the submitter that they just need to change something for it to be approved. Then add a "Update item 2" action, ApprovalStatus Value field set to Rejected, Last Modified Time field set to Modified dynamic content of the trigger.

Add a "Do Until" action, within condition box, click "Edit in advanced mode", type the following formula:

@equals(body('Get_item_2')?['ApprovalStatus']?['Value'], 'Approved')

Within "Do Until" action, add a "Delay" action, Count set to 1 and Unit set to Minute. Add a "Get item" action, Id field set to ID dynamic content of the trigger. Then add a "Condition 2", left input box set to Modified dynamic content of the "Get item" action, right input box set to Last Modified Time dynamic content of "Get item" action. Within "If/yes" branch of "Condition 2", add a "Start an approval 2" action, then add a Condition 3, left input box set to Response dynmaic content of "Start an approval 2" action, right input box set to Approve, within middle drop down, choose is equal to. Within "If/yes" of Condition 3, add a "Update item 3" action, ApprovalStatus Value field set to Approved, Last Modified Time field set to Modified dynamic content of the "Get item" action. Within "If/no" branch of Condition 3, add a "Send an email 2" action to notify the submitter that they just need to change something for it to be approved. Then add a "Update item 4" action, ApprovalStatus Value field set to Rejected, Last Modified Time field set to Modified dynamic content of the "Get item" action. Under "Condition 3" (still within "If/yes" branch of Condition 2), add a "Get item 2" action, Id field set to ID dynamic content of the trigger.

Image reference:

The "Do Until" action:

The "Condition 2" action:

The Condition 3 action:

The flow works successfully as below:

Best regards,

Kris

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vecerpa 786 on at

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Hi @v-xida-msft,

This is quite complex workaround. I was thinking about something like this, I need to use it in multilevel approval, so I need to figure out how to do it :).
But thank you for showing me the path.
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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hi @vecerpa, Did you ever come up with a solution? I want to create an approval flow, and just like you, I want a way to resubmit an approval request at the stage it was rejected and needs modification.

-Sam

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jcollins 149 on at

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I have come up with a way to do this but it can get very cumbersome and confusting to follow. But here goes:
Mine is also multi approvers... so this is added to every NO condition after the Approval stage:

photo of flow here

if Rejected, the flow will send an email to the creator and then update the status of the item. Then it will wait until the item has been modified by the original creator before it creates a new item with all the same data after the saved correction. It then terminates. The creation of the new item then kicks off the Flow on that new item.

The trick is to ensure your Get Item is getting the right version of the item and that you are creating the new item with the corrected data.

The problem here then becomes: What happens if the new item is rejected... Since the Author of the newly created item no longer belongs to the person who originally submitted it, that user won't be able to edit it. The new item gets created by the person who creates the flow and with my permissions set to only allow users to see & edit their own items, they won't see the 2nd item that was created by me if it gets rejected again.

I haven't done this yet but my idea to solve that matter is to create (or copy) that new item in a different location that is open to everyone for editing. Once they make their edits, it copies that item back to the original place and deletes it off the everyone location. I need more ideas though... this might be too complicated.. Thanks!

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vecerpa 786 on at

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Hi @Anonymous,

I was not able to test it yet, by Serge Luca have nice blog post on his site about state machine in Flow.
https://sergeluca.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/pattern-for-implementing-state-machines-with-microsoft-flow/.

The only problem is that it requires some people logic when working with approvals to be able to work when rejected.
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ScottShearer 25,278 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I'd like to suggest that it might be a better approach to have the user manually re-submit the item for approval once it has been rejected. My reasoning is that the user might make multiple edits to an item before it is ready to be resubmitted. How can you determine that the user is through making edits unless it is manually resubmitted?

Also, the Approval process does not provide you with a way to determine exactly what needs to be changed so there is no way to know if the requested changes have been made.

Have you considered using a "For a selected item" action to allow the user to re-submit?

If you want to remind the user that they need to resubmit and you are updaring the item with the result of the approval (rejected), you might run a Flow once a day (or less frequently...) that looks for items in your list that have been rejected and sends a reminder email saying that the item needs to be revised and resubmitted.

One final thought - you might include a boolean column in the list titled something like "ready to Resubmit for approval". Have a flow run when the item has changed and start the approval process again if the user has checked that box. I would also clear the check box when the Flow runs so that it doesn't run again the next time there is a change.

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robertcaretta 81 on at

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@ScottShearer - How would recommend handling Reject and Reject for Re-Submit? In the first scenario the individual is NOT allowed to make changes, and in the second that are allowed.

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jcollins 149 on at

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Thanks @ScottShearer! I like your final suggestion on having them check a box to indicate they are finished and want to re-submit. This seems feasible because you are right, if they just wanted to save and not submit, that would create an issue.

I already do the reminder flow which works nicely, thanks!

And no, i have not looked at the "For a selected item" action yet, what does it do? I haven't found any info on it yet.

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ScottShearer 25,278 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@robertcaretta :

In a scenario where an individual is not allowed to make changes, it is implied that permissions are changed on the item such that they cannot edit the item. Flow does not natively support this concept yet. However, Serge Luca has written a blog on how to accomplish this via SharePoint web service calls. In addition Plumsail has a connector that allows you to set permissiuons as well (not free).

Another option is to copy items that shopuld not be editied to another list where the individual has only read permissions and delete the originasl entry. If these items will never change, then way not move them to another list?

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