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Approvals - Multiple Approvers - How to capture all their responses and comments?

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Posted on by CP153319

I'd like to set up an approval which requires multiple approvers (where the approval must be approve by everyone). Couple questions:

How do I capture their responses, response dates and comments in a SharePoint list if there are two or more approvers? I can't see any option for how to do that.
If there are two approvers what happens if one person approves and the other rejects? I don't have a lot of time for R&D so I'm hoping someone can just tell me so I can just skip to setting up a flow of approvals instead of adding multiple people to one.

Thanks for reading.

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ScottShearer 25,290 Most Valuable Professional on at

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You can capture responses from the approvers in two ways:
1) Reference the response summary data via dynamic properties. This method does not include the approver comments
2) Loop through all the responses (Apply to each) and reference the Approver Name, Response and Comments columns

If one approver rejects, then the request is rejected and the approval ends at that time.

Please post if you have more questions or if this solves your issue.

In the Flow below, I update a multiline SharePoint column with the data in the variable at the end of the Flow.

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v-xida-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @CP153319,

Could you please share more details about your SharePoint list?

Further, could you please show a screenshot of your flow's configuration?

For your first question, you could consider take a try to add a Multiple lines of text type column in your SharePoint list to store all approvers' response, response date and comment. I have created a SharePoint list on my side and the data structure of it as below:

Note: The Response column is a Multiple lines of text type column in my SharePoint list.

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, specify Site Address and List Name.

Add a Variables-> "Initialize variable" action, Name set to AllResponses, Type set to String and Value set to empty.

Add a "Start an approval" action, Approval type set to Everyone from the assigned list, specify Assigned to .

Add a "Apply to each" action, input parameter set to Responses dynamic content of the "Start an approval" action. Within "Apply to each" action, add a "Compose" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

concat('ApproverName: ',item()?['responder']?['displayName'],' ResponseDate: ',item()?['responseDate'],' Comment: ',item()?['comments'],'</br>',variables('AllResponses'))

Add a "Set variable" action, Name set to AllResponses, Value set to output of the "Compose" action.

Under "Apply to each" action, add a "Update item" action, specify Site Address and List Name, The Responses field set to AllResponses variable.

Image reference:

The flow works successfully as below:

For your second question, any one of the two approvers reject the approval request, the whole approval request would be as rejected. In addition, if first approver reject the approval request, the whole approval request would be as rejected and the second approver could not make any response to this approval request.

Best regards,

Kris

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CP153319 on at

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Thank you for taking the time to do that!

I've chosen to take another route, not for design reasons but because I need the flow to keep pushing forward (can't have one person reject and it stops).

I've marked your response as a solution because that would work and I've seen other people asking about that type of solution.

Thanks

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fob 2 on at

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Hi,

I have about 8 approvers. I observed that the "Responses"Column in the SharePoint List doesnt hold any data until all 8 of them have approved.

Is there a way to make the responses update as the users are approving the item? Thats what I really need. I need to know who has approved/rejected and who hasn't any
@v-xida-msft wrote:
Hi @CP153319,

Could you please share more details about your SharePoint list?
Further, could you please show a screenshot of your flow's configuration?

For your first question, you could consider take a try to add a Multiple lines of text type column in your SharePoint list to store all approvers' response, response date and comment. I have created a SharePoint list on my side and the data structure of it as below:
Note: The Response column is a Multiple lines of text type column in my SharePoint list.

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, specify Site Address and List Name.
Add a Variables-> "Initialize variable" action, Name set to AllResponses, Type set to String and Value set to empty.
Add a "Start an approval" action, Approval type set to Everyone from the assigned list, specify Assigned to .
Add a "Apply to each" action, input parameter set to Responses dynamic content of the "Start an approval" action. Within "Apply to each" action, add a "Compose" action, Inputs field set to following formula:

concat('ApproverName: ',item()?['responder']?['displayName'],' ResponseDate: ',item()?['responseDate'],' Comment: ',item()?['comments'],'</br>',variables('AllResponses'))

Add a "Set variable" action, Name set to AllResponses, Value set to output of the "Compose" action.

Under "Apply to each" action, add a "Update item" action, specify Site Address and List Name, The Responses field set to AllResponses variable.
Image reference:

The flow works successfully as below:

For your second question, any one of the two approvers reject the approval request, the whole approval request would be as rejected. In addition, if first approver reject the approval request, the whole approval request would be as rejected and the second approver could not make any response to this approval request.

Best regards,
Kris

per time.

Your suggestion will be most appreciated. Or am i missing out something u have explained above?

Regards

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froggierain on at

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I got everything to work, which was great, however I can't seem to get the responses on seperate lines. Is there a way to do this. My form is created from a custom list in PowerApps, it looks like that is the only difference. It's like the concat string doesn't understand </br>. Any help would be appreciated.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Thanks for posting this solution. I'm trying to do something like this and realised this too. My issue is that I'm calling in my approvers from a mult-person field and it puts the whole approval into a 'for each' loop. Is it still possible to capture the complete responses and act on them similar to this example?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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How would you adjust the formula if I want to have all the response names, date, and outcome in separate fields? Not concatenated in the one field.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Also for some reason I am getting all responses concatenated on one line entry in my SP list but then another line for one other approver - can't figure out how or why that is happening?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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I have tried this method, but every time I get to the "Update Item" portion it asks for a list name. However, I need this to say Folder Name. How can I work around this?

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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The 'Update Item' action is for SharePoint lists and as such wont have a 'Folder' option. Are you trying to update a document or something?

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