Trigger Item is Modified -- Allowing edits to documents during approval flow without killing the flow?

[lfreeland]

Have a flow set up that to take a document through three levels of approval sequentially. It works perfectly unless edits are made to the document during the reviewal process. If an edit is made, and the person reviewing approves after the document is modified, the flow stops / does not move on to the next approval. Looking for a solution that would allow edits during the reviewal process without killing the approval flow.

Trigger: When an item or file is modified with additional setting of firing when the item is "pending," so it only triggers once the creator "Submits for Approval."

Preventing Loops: I initially set up this condition to prevent loops if someone edited an item - I didn't want the trigger to fire again. I have a column in the document library that is blank until the first approval is triggered when a creator submits. Once triggered, this column is populated with "pending." If the column is blank, the flow starts, if it is not, my intention is this prevents the flow from starting over.  

I think my issue is somewhere in these first two steps. After this, it basically just sequentially seeks approval first from the person's manager. If approved, then it is hard coded to the Finance Director's email and then finally the Director's email for final approval, so is is just based on a conditional if approved, continue, if rejected, stop.

Again, if the file is not modified, everything works as it should. However, if a file is modified during the process, the flow is killed.

Really would appreciate some help here as I think I am close!

[lfreeland]

@CraigStewart I see you've helped others with this type of trigger before, so hoping you might have time to take a look at this issue!

[lfreeland]

An update to this issue:

I thought the issue might be my trigger of when a file is modified, so I changed my trigger to "When an item is created (properties only)" and got rid of the need for the creator to "submit for approval." This also allowed me to get rid of the second condition for manager is null since I wasn't worried about re-firing anymore.

However, even with this new trigger, if I make edits to the document itself, the approval flow is killed. Edits to the document library columns are fine / do not kill the trigger, just edits inside the document. We really want to be able to collaborate on documents / make edits during the approval flow so this is an issue....

hoping someone out here has a solution!

[CraigStewart · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure the trigger is the issues here, but the document itself. 

Unfortunately I haven't done much with approvals in sharepoint but some thoughts:

As you're editing the file is it then becoming 'draft' instead of 'pending'.

Is it because the approval that was sent is tied to the version of the document prior to the edits and therefore it's no longer the valid document?

Can you turn off versioning to test this?

[lfreeland]

Thanks so much -- yes, that makes sense that it would have to do with the versioning, especially since it's also happening with the new trigger of when a document is created -- it must lose connection with the initial document.

I will attempt to turn off versioning for this document library and see if that solves it!

[lfreeland]

For anyone else struggling with this, confirming that turning off versioning in the document library worked, thank you @CraigStewart !