Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Like (0) Share

Report

Posted on 3 Aug 2022 12:54:10 by Community Power Pla...

Hello,

I have no idea why this isn't working! Any and all help would be so very appreciated.

I am building a flow that should go as follows.

(Microsoft Forms --> Approvals --> Email Notification)

1. Individual (X) fills out a form for training which requires three different approvals from their superior's (A, B, C).

2. A, B, C each get a notification on Teams to either Approve or Reject the request

3. X receives an email from our SHARED INBOX stating the response to the request.

3.1) if A, B, and C approve the request, X gets an email that says approved, congratulations. This email should also CC A,B,C and myself (my personal email)

3.2) if A, B, and C reject the request, X gets an email that says request denied. No one needs to be copied on that email.

The flow "worked" once.., but sent a Rejection email instead of an Approval email? I changed a few things around and now I am getting this warning? This operation violates admin data policy 'Global Policy', which restricts the use of business connector 'shared_microsoftforms' with non-business connector 'shared_sendmail'.

I might need to start all over.. Help! lol

Categories:

Business Process Flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (11)

Answers (0)

Community Power Pla... on 08 Aug 2022 at 11:11:48

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Thank you both so much for your help, I ended up adding a condition to each approval (so, approval A has a condition that if the outcome is Approve, Approver B will get the approval request, and if it's rejected, the responder will get an email say their request was denied) and it worked! Let me know if you think there might be some issues that arise with this set up. 🙂

Cheers!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ChadVKealey 1,393 on 05 Aug 2022 at 12:25:47

Like (1)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Sorry...to clarify, I don't recommend the single compound condition because it's complicated and inefficient compared to simply having one approval assigned to all three people using the "Everyone must approve" option.

Based on your most recent reply (that there isn't a specific order), I would concur with @edgonzales and suggest using a single approval that is assigned to A, B and C with the Approval type set to "Everyone must approve".

When you had it configured that way, how was it failing? Which actual step wasn't completing as expected? Also, the approval action itself doesn't send any response...that's up to you to configure through a condition. The condition should evaluate the "Outcome" of the approval action (NOT the "Approver Response"). "Outcome" is the overall 'decision' for the action. Using the "Everyone must approve" type, if A, B and C ALL select "Approve", then the Outcome will be Approve. If even one of them selects "Reject" then it'll be Reject.

EDIT: the struck out text above is not entirely correct. When using the "Everyone must approve" type, the Outcome will actually be a string containing each response value, comma separated, in reverse chronological order. So, if you have two approvers and the first approves, then the second rejects, the Outcome will be "Reject, Approve". If the first rejects, then the Outcome will simply be "Reject".

So, the condition should evaluate the Outcome using one of the "contains" operators. Either Output contains Reject (in which case an action in the If yes branch would notify the requestor that it was rejected) OR Output does not contain Reject (in which case an action in the If yes branch would notify the requestor that it was approved). Yes, that whole double-negative logic of conditions can be confusing.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Power Pla... on 05 Aug 2022 at 11:50:41

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

@edgonzales @ChadVKealey There is no specific order to the approvals, all three just have to be approved. I originally did have A, B, and C in one step, but it kept failing or sending all approval emails even if the request had been rejected...

Why don't you recommend a single compound condition?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ChadVKealey 1,393 on 04 Aug 2022 at 19:58:52

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Yes, that would work assuming there's no specific order to the approvals. If they need to be completed sequentially, that wouldn't work. It's unclear from the OP's description whether that is the case or not.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Ed Gonzales 4,531 Most Valuable Professional on 04 Aug 2022 at 19:52:21

Like (1)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

@Anonymous
I meant have the approval in one step. You can have a single approval with multiple approvers, that will give you only one outcome to manage. It would look something like this:

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ChadVKealey 1,393 on 04 Aug 2022 at 18:56:40

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

First, to help keep things straight, rename those actions to something logical (e.g.: "Approval A", "Approval B", etc.)

Next, I can't see where those conditions are, but I assume it's between the 1st & 2nd, then the 2nd & 3rd approval actions? If so, each one should be checking the Outcome of the preceding Approval action (e.g.: the one after Approval A would check the Outcome of the Approval A action). In the No branch under each condition, you would want to define what should happen if the approver selects Reject and be sure that it includes a Terminate action to end the flow. So, if Approver A Rejects it, something happens (e.g.: send an email to the requestor) and then the flow ends. Without the terminate action, the next approval will send anyway, which you probably don't want.

Now, if you wanted to do a single compound condition (and I DO NOT recommend this), you would add rows to individually evaluate the Outcome of EACH approval action, something like what's shown below. Basically, it's saying "If Approval A Outcome is Approve AND Approval B Outcome is Approve AND Approval C Outcome is Approve". Because it's a logical AND, the "If yes" branch will fire ONLY if ALL THREE are Approve. If even one is Reject, it'll follow the "If no" branch.

And believe me, I understand deadlines, but I suspect this is an important enough project to be sure it's done right the first time. If it's NOT, you'll just have to fix it later and may ALSO have to contend with users who don't trust the system to function properly.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Power Pla... on 04 Aug 2022 at 18:37:24

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Hi @ChadVKealey @edgonzales, thank you both SO MUCH. Getting close to a deadline, so this is so appreciated!

Does this help? How should it be written? Like this?

@equals(body('Start_an_approval','Start_and_wait_for_an_approval','Start_and_wait_for_an_approval_2')?['outcome'], 'Approve')

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ChadVKealey 1,393 on 04 Aug 2022 at 17:42:06

Like (1)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

As @edgonzales mentions, it's most likely the order of the Approval actions. Each one of those has its own "Outcome", so without seeing how your condition is configured, we can tell which action's outcome is being evaluated. Technically, you could create a compound condition (example: "If outcome of Approval A is Approve AND outcome of Approval B is Approve AND outcome of Approval C is Approve") which would kind of, sort of be like assigning a single "Everyone must approve" Approval to all three. Alternately, if the approvals need to happen in that specific order, then you'll need to insert a condition after each one to evaluate its outcome and decide whether to send the next approval. As it stands now, when Approver A completes the approval - regardless of their choice - the next approval will be sent to Approver B.

BTW, this playlist goes into detail on Approvals in Power Automate. I've found that a LOT of people start using them without really understanding how they work and get confused or frustrated. Start small with some basic, single-approver scenarios before complicating things with multiple approvers.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Ed Gonzales 4,531 Most Valuable Professional on 04 Aug 2022 at 14:47:01

Like (1)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Hi, it's not the shared inbox that is causing issues....it's the shared connection on the flow.

On your approval, it looks like you've got three different approvals going, rather than 1 approval with three people. Is that the case? You'll want a single "Start and wait for approval" step, with the "assigned to" being all three people, and the type being "everyone must approve".
-Ed

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Power Pla... on 04 Aug 2022 at 10:59:43

Like (0)

Report

Re: Help! Flow Involving: Microsoft Forms, Approvals and Email Notification Not Working!

Hi edgonzales,

Thank you so much for your help.

So basically, I won't be able to use the shared inbox to send the approval/rejection email? Our organization has fairly strict regulations, I can't see them allowing an exception to the policy in this case..

I actually figured it out but I have a different issue now. I am still getting a "Approved' email even if one of A, B, or C rejects my request? Any idea?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No