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Attachments on Approvals from forms

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Posted on by AMcmasterSage

Hi,

I'm trying to build a function into my approval flow where the file attached to a Microsoft Form submission is then attached to the following approval request. Is there a step I need to follow so that the file gets attached to the approval in the format it was submitted? Right now everything just converts to a generic file.

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Pstork1 68,858 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I've got a walkthrough that I did on my Blog of just that scenario. You can read it here:

Emailing File Attachments from Forms with Power Automate – What Me Pa..Panic? (dontpapanic.com)

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AMcmasterSage 37 on at

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Hi,

This will work when attaching files specifically to an approval step, yes? I'll try and work through it now and see what I get.

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Pstork1 68,858 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Yes, the walkthrough is about taking a file uploaded in response to a question in Microsoft Forms and sending it out for Approval using Power Automate.

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e-wei 23 on at

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Hi, is it possible to send the ms forms response itself and their attachments to approval? So the manager has to see the submitted forms and their attachment before approve or reject

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Pstork1 68,858 Most Valuable Professional on at

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There is no form that you can just attach. But you can save the answers from the form response into the body of the approval or a pdf that you attach. YOu would need to add the questions themselves since they aren't provided as part of the response. However, each question would need to be handled individually since they don't come in as any kind of array.

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e-wei 23 on at

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Thank you @Pstork1 for your quick response. However I think it would be a possibility to increase the usage of MS Forms, if the responses could be automatically saved as pdf in best case with possibility to save on it also the approval results. We will be able to save a lot of time and paper in daily business, where forms could be one possible tool for. Maybe if you have some idea for workaround, please, let me know

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Pstork1 68,858 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I agree it would be nice, but unfortunately, that functionality doesn't exist in forms today and I haven't seen it on the road map. As I said, it is possible to do what you are asking, but it would be a completely manual process to build out the form in the flow and save it as a PDF.

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hello Paul, thank you so much for this explanation. I have a question: when several attachments are added to the MS form, many emails will be sent (as many as attachments. At least, that's what I got on my test). Is there a way that all attachments to be sent in 1 unique email? Thank you again!

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Pstork1 68,858 Most Valuable Professional on at

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To send all the attachments in one email you need to append each attachment to an array and then add the array to the email just before you send it. The mistake most people make is they add the attachment directly to the email action inside a loop. That will send multiple emails.

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Community Power Pla... on at

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I am trying actually to add an approval flow after "appending to array variable" which sends the attachments on email to be approved and after that a condition yes/no to answer the requester approved/rejected. Any chance you can explain step by step this last part? I am trying to combine different flows as I am not technical at all, so not sure what it's going wrong. Thanks a lot, Much appreciated it.

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