Power Automate State Machine - Timed out approvals don't disappear after State 1

[Lukakico]

Hello everyone,

I have created an approval workflow including a state machine that restarts once the approval has either been approved or has timed out.

If it's successful, the workflow will restart and then proceed to state 2 (filtered by a field "Workflow-Status"). If it times out after 1 hour (for testing purposes), it will restart the workflow at the state that it has timed out.

Now as far as the starting state 1 concerns, it works fine. If the approval has timed out, it disappears from the "Action items" in Power Automate and can't be accessed anymore.

But as soon as it gets to state 2 or any following state, the approval stays there and stacks up for every run in the workflow. So for example:

I don't answer the workflow for 5 hours which has entered state 2, I get 5 approvals, from which only the newest one works. (as the other workflows have been stopped already)

Below I have attached a screenshot from the workflow states. They are the same for every state.

Does anyone know of this problem? And is there maybe another way to get rid of timed out approvals?

Thank you very much for your help ! Let me know if you need any additional information.

[Emily46]

Hi, 

maybe the YouTube-Video "Power Automate State Machine Workflows" and "Power Automate long running Approval flows (beyond 30 days)"

from reza dorrani can help solving your problem. It works for me.

Except when the flow is reaching the 30 day limit of a flow. Then the process is sending to much approvals to the person who is in line. But my process is really huge. I will separate the flow in smaler steps.

Hope this will help.

Best regards

[Lukakico]

Hi,

unfortunately I have built the workflow exactly as described in this video (I watched it beforehand) and still the approvals don't disappear when they timeout.

Thanks anyway!