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Approval Process - Administrator approving on behalf of user

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hi,

How can an administrative user (e.g. a flow owner or an Office 365 admin) approve/reject an approval request on behlaf of another user? In a realistic scenario, this may be if someone is away sick, but the approval is holding up a business process from going forward - it will be crucial in this kind of situation to have an administrator to have the ability to approve/reject an approval request so that things don't get held up.

Thanks!

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ScottShearer 25,331 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Currently, Flow does not support the ability for anyone other than the assigned approver to take action on an approval.

You might submit this as a Flow Idea here.

A work around might be to set a timeout on the approval action. If the approval does not happen within a specified time period, it times out and the Flow moves on possibly to another approval.

Here is a simplified example:
When a new item is created in a SharePoint list, an Approval starts
If that Approval doesn't finish within 1 minute ( I am impatient....), the second Approval starts
To set the timeout for 1 day, the duration would be P1D
If the first approval does not time out, the second approval does not run

If this meets your needs, please mark you question as Solved.

Scott
Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi Scott,

Thanks for this. I don't think this fits the specific use case that my client has in mind, as the ability to override an approval is not necessarily tied to a time period - there's more likely to be another business reason (such as someone being away sick, CEO too busy, etc). I will submit this as an idea - Admins generally have the ability to perform operations of behalf of an employee user in Office 365 (e.g. SharePoint, Exchange) and approvals in flow should be no different.

Thanks.
v-xida-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Anonymous,

Do you want the Office 365 Admin have full permission to approve/reject an approval request sent to any Employee within the Office 365 group?

If you want the Office 365 Admin to approve/reject the Approval request when the Employee doesn't make a response to the Approval request within specific time, I think @ScottShearer's solution could achieve your needs.

If you want the Office 365 Admin have full permission to approve/reject an approval request sent to any Employee within the Office 365 group no matter if the Employee has made a response to the Approval request, I afraid that there is no way to achieve your needs in Microsoft Flow currently.

If you would like this feature to be added in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Best regards,

Kris
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Hi @v-xida-msft,

It is definitely the latter case - i.e. "Office 365 Admin have full permission to approve/reject an approval request sent to any Employee within the Office 365 group". My client has asked for the ability for an administrator to be able to action an approval, regardless of time - that could be instant, or that could be 5 days later. So while @ScottShearer's suggestion is a good one, it won't satisfy my client's business requirements.

I have actually made two new idea requests here and here, both would satisfy their requirement.

Thanks!