Approval Process - multiple approvals required

[rishkarthik]

Hi, I am using Paralel approval process using "Start an Approval" action with "Everyone from the assigned list", workflow is completing if all the approvers approved or any one reject the task, However I would like to know pending approver details? can we get those details?

Per eample - Total Approver is 5 and only 3 approvers approved the task, I need to get who all are approved and who is pending? Please suggest is there a way to get those details. Please share it.

Regards

Karthik

[Leon_Ingleright]

I second this -- I have an approval flow for a particular type of specification document we use a lot that requires multiple people to approve before being deemed authorized for buildout.  Currently there is no way to check to see who has and who has not answered the approval notification before all of the answers are obtained and the flow moves forward.  It would be helpful to be able to follow up with those who haven't answered, as many times things slip through email unnoticed (and as an organization we are generally not using Flow much, so they wouldn't know to check in their "approvals" tab).  Even if there were just some way to have individual email replies sent to the originator as the answers are registered, that would be helpful.

[Suep]

My scenario is similar to the other multi-approval processes. We have a sequential approval process which is needed for our company. When an item is added to a SharePoint list (which has a column for each management level listing name, response and a comment section). An approval email should first go to Manager 1 to approve or disapprove. No matter what is decided at that level the process proceeds and an approval email goes out to the 2nd Manager. Once again, no matter what is decided at that level an approval email goes to the 3rd Manager (GM) who has the ultimate approve/disapprove decision and will override any previous decisions. What we need is for all managers to see within the Approval Center the comments and responses of other managers and if details change, the ability to go back to the Approval Center to modify comments.

I cannot yet find a definitive video or documentation dealing exclusively with the Approval Center and possibilities of what can be done there.  Any help would be appreciated.

[katonage]

similar request, please vote:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Apply-to-each-for-Approvals-send-out-many-approvals-i...

[Stephen]

With the Approval actions you get an array of all results - so you can see what each person responded with. You can use a filter or apply-to-each to access each of the responses specifically and write your own logic.

[Basic_User007]

@Stephenis there any blog or documentation on how to do as you suggested?

I would need more detailed instructions to be able to understand and complete what you are recommending. 

[Piper]

@Stephen you marked this as complete and yet I don't think you responded to the original poster's question (see bolded text below). We all know how to get the response detail when the approval action is complete, what we don't have is visibility to the individual approval responses when one or more responses are still pending a response.

If there is a way to do it I would also be interested in seeing how that is accomplished.

Thanks!

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@rishkarthik wrote:

Hi, I am using Paralel approval process using "Start an Approval" action with "Everyone from the assigned list", workflow is completing if all the approvers approved or any one reject the task, However I would like to know pending approver details? can we get those details?

Per eample - Total Approver is 5 and only 3 approvers approved the task, I need to get who all are approved and who is pending? Please suggest is there a way to get those details. Please share it.

Regards

Karthik

---

[Stephen]

Hello @Piper  - to build this you can construct a flow like this one: 

Basically - the Create an approval action outputs an array of the Approvers (along with their details like Name, Email, ID). Then the Wait for an approval action will output the Responders (again along with their details). If you want just a list of the people who are pending, you need to filter the second list (Responders) from the first list (all of the approvers). 

For example, the above flow will send an email out with just the details of the pending approvers followed by the details of the people who responded. 

[Piper]

Thanks for your reply and visual example @Stephen - that helped me understand data operations better.

I'm still unclear on the pending approvals part though. If we only have 3 or the 5 approvals (and those 3 have approved - none rejected) wouldn't we still be in the Wait for Approval (V2) step?

Thanks!

Piper

[Stephen]

@Piper  - there needs to be some timer/trigger for you to check the approval status? So you can't just immedately proceed to the next step because nobody will have approved. The above flow is the easiest way - once the approval hits an exit condition you'll get the data of all of the pending approvers.

If you want to instead query ongoing approval status while it's still executing then you need to use a do-until loop. Inside such a loop you can query the underlying CDS database for who has/hasn't responded. However, this is much more complicated because you'll need to loop based on some time (e.g. every 1 hour or every 1 day) since you're not using the end of the approval for you time. 

[dbro]

@Piper , @Leon_Ingleright , @Suep , @katonage , @Basic_User007 ,

I created a new post on this same topic. Please upvote it. In my opinion I don't think the original post was answered so am re-issueing it here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Multiple-Approvers-See-who-has-not-taken-action-yet/i...