Power Automate - Majority Approval - When first or All is not enough

[@kkb92-96x]

Thanks DB365, this was very helpful. Right on time when I needed it. I will be implementing your approach in one of my approval process.

[@zineddine]

Thank you once again for the great video. I tried the timeout function demoed here, but i am still able to approve or reject after the the workflow timeouts and complete!

[@DamoBird365]

Agreed that the approval will remain open but it won’t be actioned as the flow is complete. If you have premium licensing, you can also update the associated record and cancel the approval from within the approvals table of Dataverse.

[@zineddine]

@@DamoBird365 Thank you for your feedback, this is a strange behavior! Any reference to the the approval tables in Dataverse records are stored and would it be possible to do the updates from Power Automate? Also is there a way to make the approval email to change to say that it is expired?

[@DamoBird365]

Take a look at Tomasz’s video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3PXiayeiN58raM and see if it helps you with your scenario.

[@davidadams421]

Outstanding! The overall approval in this solution is based on using 'what responses you have after a certain time'. How would modify for 'first x approvals', let's say two approvals needed? If the approvals - first response actions are running in parallel, could you put the for-each loop inside a do-until varApprovalCount

[@DamoBird365]

The do until would still need to check regularly with a delay? There is an Approvals API and assosciated Dataverse Tables, so with a Premium license, you could trigger on record update, count the number of approve/reject and proceed www.matthewdevaney.com/extend-a-power-automate-approval-over-the-30-day-limit/

[@davidadams421]

Oh, wow, not as easy as I had hoped! I feel sure this can be done without resorting to the underlying Dataverse tables. Challenge accepted!! 😏 I'm going to fail, aren't I... lol!

[@julien8979]

Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to seeing a video with the same concept with dynamic approvals reminders feature. For example, if we're sending approvals to multiple members, the users who don't approve within a specific timeframe should receive a reminder whereas the users who already approved should not receive a reminder.

[@DamoBird365]

You can do that with a parallel do until in the apply to each loop. Have a delay, check the outcome and if not approve or reject, send reminder. I would need to play it out to be sure though. That’s the basic idea.

[@julien8979]

@@DamoBird365 Yes, but the idea is how the loop will know that I already took a decision and it should not send me the reminder. So I think we need to extend the Approvals table using the Dataverse connector to check.

[@lxz86]

very detail and useful, thanks a lot

[@smsdamzat7903]

thank you. this is very helpful

[@redheadedknitter]

Is there a way to include the approval responses in the wmail notification that the request was approved or denied? I'm struggling to figure this out.

[@m.k.t.7971]

This is the great video! I followed your instructions to create flow to collect all the feedback from multiple approvers and record all feedback to a SharePoint list column 'ProcessComments'. Instead of an approval for approve/reject, I use a 'custom-first to respond' approval for only 'Feedback' option. The approvers' emails are dynamically selected from another SharePoint list with 'Course' and 'ContactEmail' ('Course' could be multi-selected). My issue is that the 'Responses' only capture the first response without combine all responses. Could you please help advice how to improve the flow? Thank you so much!

[@DamoBird365]

maybe one to ask on the forum powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Forums/ct-p/FL_Comm_Forums

[@valerieincorvaia2237]

Thanks! This is very helpful! If I wanted to create an approval flow with majority approval AND multiple outcomes - for example, Approved; Approved - Grandfathered; and Denied, is there a way to accomplish this by tweaking what was shown in the video? After adding the condition for the number of response, I only see the option for Yes or No. Thank you in advance!

[@DamoBird365]

You should be able to use advanced settings to create your own reasons?

[@patriciapinpin5221]

Thanks for sharing this video! one question though - why do i get an error on the Start and wait for an approval section saying "Correct to include a valid reference to 'Update_item' for the input parameter(s) of action 'Start_and_wait_for_an _approval'."

[@DamoBird365]

Are you able to share a screenshot? Is your flow identical or are you doing additional actions? [e-mail]

[@raymondha8516]

but if i dont build this wait response, will it still time out after 30 days?

[@DamoBird365]

Absolutely…. They will all time out at 30 days as that is the default, but it will then apply the majority outcome.

[@chrisgilles9742]

Thank you very much! How would the end user track who the approval went to? In Teams it only shows that single approver.

[@DamoBird365]

By who, do you mean the initial array of emails? That can be dynamic, I’ve used an array for ease.

[@chrisgilles9742]

@@DamoBird365 Yes - I followed your guide, instead using a Distribution Group, it creates an approval for each user in the array, but the end user cannot see who has approved or who hasn’t responded. This is different if you created an approval with “wait for all responses” where you can see the entire list of approvers on the same approval.

[@DamoBird365]

You can see who has and hasn’t at the end of the timeout via the filter arrays? Are you looking for updates before the timeout? You could have a parallel do until based on length of array (that does any chasing or updating) and within the apply to each append to array for each approval that is completed.

[@elainenuttall6637]

@@DamoBird365 Hi, love your video, works perfectly!! Was wondering if you could kindly expand on this suggestion, I too would like to update my sharepoint list each time one of the approvals is received rather than the waiting for timeout or all to responses to be received. I tried a parallel branch with start and wait for approval and it didn't work. Do I put the start and wait for approval in the do while? Apologies I'm still a beginner.