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Length of time for Approval emails to come in

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Posted on by diyninja

I've been trying to develope an approval process using Approvals. However, when the flow runs the approval email takes a long time to come in. The shortest was 35 minutes and the longest was 2 hours. Any idea?

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v-xida-msft on at

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Hi @diyninja,

Could you please share a screenshot of your flow's configuration?

Do you send the approval emails using the "Start an approval" action?

I have made a test on my side and don't have the issue that you mentioned. When my flow runs, the approval email takes about 10 seconds to arrive in my Outlook inbox.

If the approval email takes a long time to arrive in your Outlook mailbox, please check if you have set Delay Incoming Message within your Outlook mailbox. Please check and see if the following article would help in your scenario:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/297c332a-916a-4cc9-8a4b-15cf6f765ae3/receiving-emails-delayed-in-outlook-office-365-environment?forum=officeitpro

In addition, please take a try to re-create your flow and try it again to check if the issue is solved. In addition, please consider close your Outlook client and re-open again, then try your flow to check if the issue is solved.

Best regards,

Kris

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diyninja 18 on at

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Hi v-xida-msft

Thanks for the reply! i tried the article you've attached and that didn't make a difference. I've built and rebuild the flow with no success. i've tested the email part by just creating the flow to send an email upon trigger and it works fine (like you mentioned it comes in a few seconds later) . This morning it seems to taking on average 15-20 minutes. I have a Apply to each on the approval because the approver field is a multi-value field. I'm thinking it might be that. Here is my flow:

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diyninja 18 on at

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Just to update. The emails still take longer than 30 minutes to arrive. I have not found a solution yet.

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diyninja 18 on at

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after a few weeks the issue seems to have cleared on its own and the emails not come in within a few seconds

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YatinMumbai 123 on at

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I have the same issue. I am using Start and wait for an Approval. Approval email sometimes takes seconds or at other times several minutes, event up to an hour. There is no error and once email arrives all works as per next steps.

I can see the request created in Flow left menu instantly -> Action Items -> Approvals -> Received Items and can approve from there without waiting for the email, indicating the Flow is working properly. Please fix this bug or the handshake between Flow and Exchange.

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LimeLeaf 278 on at

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We experience the same behavior in the approval flows since the last two weeks.
We had the same behavior in August 22 but it suddenly disappeared.

Also created a thread regarding this topic in the last year:
Re: Approval mails - long runtime - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)

Now again with no changes to the flow the approval emails suddenly take up to an hour or a few seconds to arrive.

We tried the following without any result:
- Updated O365 version of clients
- Created a new connection for approvals and assigned it to the approval activities affected
- Checked mail gateways if any mails from MS are processed slowly or get blocked (maccount@microsoft.com, flow-noreply@microsoft.com, azure-noreply@microsoft.com)

The only workaround for the enduser that works fine is to answer the approval on the power automate page.
Here all the approvals arrive in time. (Just make sure you select the right environment where the approval flow creates the approvals).

Another workaround is to use the "approval" app in MS Team for the clients. (Manage the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn). The functionality is pretty much the same as the approval on power automate page. With the advantage of integration with MS Teams and notifications. Also with this app we do not expierenced any delays in approval flows.

Anyone solved this problem?

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