Adding an Attachment to an Approval Email In Flow

[Anonymous]

You should be able to attach a document to an approval email using flow. 

[lmayerle]

Hmm yeah just kind of interesting that it still goes through but can't complete the approval.

The size limit doesn't stop the approval from reaching the approver or stop the approver from approving, the approval just doesn't go through.

Any plans to fix this? 

[lmayerle]

@TCambs  maybe you can provide some direction?

[Yemata]

@Stephen  Is there any work around the size limitation ? 

[TCambs]

Hey all,

We are currently working on an official announcement / documentation that got delayed by the Holidays. Regarding the attachments limits I can give insight to why as I did everything I could to allow the maximum size based on existing limitations in other systems:

In order to maximize the attachment size limit it's more complicated than one simple limit. It's actually three limits:

1. Approvals backend service
1. Combined attachment size (sum of all attachment sizes unencoded) is 50MB.
2. We set this limit.
2. Common Data Service
1. Individual attachment size limit defaults to 5MB
2. A CDS admin can change this by going into CDS -> Email Configuration settings -> Set file size limit for attachments
3. The internal emailing service we use:
1. Combined attachment size is 5MB
2. If this limit is exceeded then attachments do not show up in the approval emails and instead an "attachments are too big" message shows up with a link to see them in the Approval center.

Everyone is most likely hitting the Common Data Service limit of 5MB which they should contact their admin to increase. Common Data Service allows the limit to be set to a maximum of ~132MB for an individual attachment.

[Yemata]

@TCambs  Thank you for the explanation , it is helpful. 

Thank you again. 

[TCambs]

@lmayerle

Could you please provide the url of the flow run where you are hitting this issue so that I can investigate for you?

The known issues I am currently working on fixing:

• Files with empty content causes sending approval emails to fail to a limitation with the internal emailing service.
• Approval actions don't display the proper failure message when creating approvals with attachments that are banned by the Common Data Service configuration.

[lmayerle]

sure @TCambs 

https://canada.flow.microsoft.com/manage/environments/Default-b9cdd4bf-c5bd-4a05-8c07-2f0cfec740cf/f...

The issue is found in "Start and wait for an approval 2" in the "yes" side of the final decision action.

It runs, approver is able to see attachments in approval center and approve, but the approval does not move forward.

Thanks for taking a look into this!

[lmayerle]

@TCambs  the attachments are being pulled from a SharePoint list that is populated by a PowerApp.  Not sure if that makes any difference, but thought I'd point that out.

[TCambs]

@lmayerle 

Looks like a regression, I can reproduce the problem. It's failing for a size over 8MB (for a reason unrelated to any limits). I will work on a fix along side the other known issues immediately. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

[lmayerle]

Thanks @TCambs, I really appreciate your help!

Would you be able to give me an update once this is finished?

How long do you think this update will take to complete?