Condition Action based on Approval Responses keeps evaluating incorrectly

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Posted on by CU11121951-0

I have created an approval flow where approvals may be needed by up to 3 different people. Depending on the document, it might only need one approver, or it might need 2 or it might need 3. I need to create a condition whereby the approval is evaluated not based on it is approved but checking that it was not rejected. The approval for an item has three potential responses: approved, rejected or not needed (approver field is null)
Few couple things to note as to why it's structured the way it is:

Each approval is a start and wait approval (first to respond) because I don't want to send the approvals to a group of approvers
I need to be able to tell who has responded and who as not

This is the condition action that I can't get to evaluate properly:

Breakdown of the first three conditions are "responses approver response" is not equal to "Reject" to accommodate for the times where there is no approver and no approval response. These are my response choices to use for dynamic content:

I think I've tried all three of these options with "is not equal to Reject" but none seem to work. I've also verified that the output a Reject response is actually "Reject" and not "Rejected".

If it's helpful to know this is the message I get when the condition is evaluated

How do I fix this condition so that it evaluates properly?

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Building flows

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Pstork1 69,556 Most Valuable Professional on at

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For the three responses you need to check whether the outcome of each response contains reject. You'll do each approval in a series like this

Start and Wait for approval for approver one

-if outcome does not contain reject and a second approver is needed then

-Send Start and Wait for approval for approver two

-if outcome does not contain reject and a third approver is needed then

-Send Start and Wait for approval for approver three

If outcome contains reject on any of the if statements then the item is rejected.

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Haque

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Hi @CU11121951-0

About the last error you mentioned:

“The expression contains dynamic functions, variables or parameters that cannot be resolved in the debugger” shows when you use advanced expressions in a Condition. The debugger in Power Automate can’t evaluate dynamic references like triggerOutputs()?['body/...'] or result('ActionName') at design time, so it throws that warning. It doesn’t mean your expression is wrong; it just means the designer can’t preview it.

The condition will be evaluated correctly at runtime when the flow executes. It issues a false positive warning simply because it can’t resolve dynamic values while you’re editing. You can ignore the debugger warning — it’s normal for dynamic expressions. Just run and test the flow ans see history - it works fine.

One of the solutions @Pstork1 mentioned.

In my point of view, what else you can do is in the expression (advanced expressions to evaluate conditions):

Condition-1: We can simplify with an expression instead of stacking multiple “is not equal to Reject” checks in the designer

and(
   or(empty(variables('Approver1Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver1Response'),'Reject'))),
   or(empty(variables('Approver2Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver2Response'),'Reject'))),
   or(empty(variables('Approver3Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver3Response'),'Reject')))
)

Note: empty - checks "not needed" case,

not(equals(...,'Reject')) guards against "approved" case and outer and confirms all stakeholders(approvers) should meet the condition inside.

Condition-2: We need to make sure at least one approver is/has "Approved"

or(
   equals(Approver1Response,'Approve'),
   equals(Approver2Response,'Approve'),
   equals(Approver3Response,'Approve')
)

Combine them (two conditions): Condition passes if no one rejects AND at least one approves

and(
   // Condition 1: No Rejects
   and(
      or(empty(variables('Approver1Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver1Response'),'Reject'))),
      or(empty(variables('Approver2Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver2Response'),'Reject'))),
      or(empty(variables('Approver3Response')), not(equals(variables('Approver3Response'),'Reject')))
   ),
   // Condition 2: At Least One Approve
   or(
      equals(variables('Approver1Response'),'Approve'),
      equals(variables('Approver2Response'),'Approve'),
      equals(variables('Approver3Response'),'Approve')
   )
)

The above combined checks ensures no approver rejects, at least one aprover approves and nulls are treated as "no needed".

Please note that in expressions, empty() function is the safest way to check for nulls. The check empty(variables('Approver1Response')) returns true if approver1Response is null or blank - just for your reference.

Tip: Replace variables('ApproverXResponse') with the actual dynamic content fields you’re using (e.g., items('Apply_to_each')?['Approver1Response']).

Now complete these test scenario if you have implemented expressions:

Test Scenario
Approver1	Approver2	Approver3	Expected Outcome
Approve	null	null	✅ Pass
Approve	Approve	null	✅ Pass
Approve	Approve	Approve	✅ Pass
Reject	Approve	null	❌ Fail
null	null	null	❌ Fail

Please let me know if this helps.

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deepakmehta13a 369 on at

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Hi,

The issue here is that “Start and wait for an approval” returns responses as an array/object, not a simple string, so using “is not equal to Reject” directly on approverResponse won’t evaluate correctly.

What you should do instead is:

Use the Outcome field (which returns “Approve” or “Reject”)

Or explicitly reference the response like:
outputs('Start_and_wait_for_an_approval')?['body/outcome']

Also, for multiple approvers, handle nulls safely using something like:

or(equals(outcome,'Approve'), empty(outcome))

In short, the fix is:

Don’t compare raw response objects

Use Outcome (string) or properly extract the value

Hope this helps.
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