Department Approval (participation) Question

[PDT2017]

Hello All, 

I am attempting to build a flow based on the following process below, but I am stuck on how to set up the condition or switch once the responses are received. Essentially, we create a workbook request through power automate based on form submission. The requesting department would fill out the form to departments they selected to be affected via the form. Through the approval, the affected departments would select whether they wanted to participate or not. Those who selected yes would be added to a team to complete a checklist and add documents. Those who selected need more info would be added to a chat with the adaptive card to schedule a meeting, review documentation, etc. If all selected no, it would close out the request. 

Appreciate any thoughts and ideas! 

[Rhiassuring]

Hi there, 

I want to make sure I have this straight - I'm a bit thrown off by the word "workbook" in this (because of Excel connotations), so I am going to ignore it for now. 

I have a few questions, based on this understanding. (And I am starting with a single department to understand the flow, in the diagram.) 

Questions:

❔Is this selection made on a Microsoft Form?

❔What happens if the request is for Marketing and IT, and Marketing says "No" but IT says "Yes" to participating. Should someone be notified, or an amendment made? Does the request have to be resubmitted?

❔If both say "Yes" to participating, should they have any assignments in the MS Team? (You mentioned checklists that need to be filled out.) 

❔If both Marketing & IT say "Need More Info", are they added to the same chat with the adaptive card, or are they separated based on department? Is this a never-ending same chat every time situation? 

Cheers,

Rhia

[PDT2017]

Thanks for responding! Essentially the workbook is just a word document prefilled by the MS Form responses and converted into a PDF document.

The goal is to start a “policy workbook” to introduce a new policy or change an existing department.

The requesting department would fill out the MS form and select the affected departments on the form and add in the policy information.

Code

The “policy workbook” gets automated in a PDF with the form responses and updates our SharePoint list (tracker).

My goal is to send the approval with the attached workbook from the requesting department to the departments affected.

From your example, if the Marketing department said “no” and IT said “yes,” the IT department would proceed to be added to the channel with the requesting department and begin an MS Planner checklist and submit other documentation.

The Requesting department would be notified (via email) that the marketing department said “NO” to participate and be provided the comments as to why not. Then, they would have to resubmit the request to this department to start again (Unless it’s another option).

If IT says they “needed more information,” they would be added to an MS Teams chat (with the persons representing that department) with the requesting department to discuss scheduling a meeting or quickly clarify the more information required with the attachment (hopefully using the adaptive card).

If they say they need more information and it’s discussed, the chat should go away. If they proceed, everything would reroute to saying yes to the approval, and any further discussion would be in the channel created.

[Rhiassuring]

Oh I see! It's a policy / procedure shindig. I gotcha now. How is it going with the Approvals - will all the departments respond within the 30 day limit of whether they will or will not participate? (That is my first concern so I want to validate it...) Are you emailing individuals of the departments, or, a department email address?

Okay, let's see, how would I deal with this - I'm going to assume everyone responds within 3 days. Hmm. I hate long-running flows, so I would probably split it into Getting the Approvals, logging them into a list (because you can't really access approvals any other way yet - the MS Graph team is working on it, as I understand), and then having a Flow trigger on that list to identify the folks who said "Request More Info", and doing a "For Each" on them to add them into their chats, and then on the folks who said "Approve", drop them into the Team. The "Request More Info" folks would maybe have a button on the adaptive card that's along the lines of "I get it now, I approve" that would add a line into that Approval list, and trigger the "add into Teams" workflow.

That's my first thought - but - this is a whole out requirements gathering jamboree, haha, lots of considerations. What were your initial thoughts on approach? Is my idea similar?

[PDT2017]

Exactly! No, to the 30 day limit. I would say if they haven’t responded in two weeks it will close (or pause the approval). I definitely want to send them reminders to review the approval after 1 day, 3 days, and a week before it warns them of closing (maybe in a later phase down the road lol going preptty big for my first flow already.)

It will be individuals representing each department that will be emailed. 

I did create a MS List that captures the workbook number and what phases it’s in and the submission details for the “Master List” so maybe I could send the approvals through there based on the response. 

I think splitting the responses and then creating the conditions is going to be the best way with having many different outcome scenarios. Otherwise I think I would have a whole lot of if then statements in conditions as I would have to list all scenarios individually. 

I LOVE your idea on the adaptive card action. That’s perfect for the Need More Info. 

Appreciate the feedback. 

[Rhiassuring]

This is your FIRST flow!? Nicely done - pretty impressive! 
Let us know how it goes - you have lots of pieces here to work through. 

[PDT2017]

Thank you! The pieces of this puzzle are starting to fit together! I was able to get the approval responses individually on the MS List.

I was also able to have it add those who accepted to the team based on the response and the “Workbook number” it assigns. Then it creates the channel and sends the adaptive card.

Still plenty of piecing to do, but it is coming together nicely!

[Rhiassuring]

Great work! 

[PDT2017]

Thank you! I have a question about the apply each to the condition. I notice when I included the create a channel option inside the apply each, it kept trying to duplicate the channel for each person on the list. I moved it outside of the apply each and it works great. My question is however if someone selected decline, would it attempt to still create a channel and post a message since I moved it on the outside?