Solved: Re: Multiple Approvers with timeout

lokeshpatel · ‎10-06-2021

Hello,

I am looking into an approval mechanism for my organization. I've researched quite a few things without any luck.

TLDR; Approval of SharePoint documents, with one or more dynamic approvers, without timing out, and having individuals see other's responses prior to making their own.

Long version; I have a SP Document Library. I have created a Flow that can be triggered when a document is ready to be approved. This prompts the user for individuals that need to approve the document and if it has to go through one or two step approval. From @RezaDorrani's excellent videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTyFh-qDKAiFUGTtwSwFT79Y7_jq_Aipe), I have created a Flow that includes: dynamics approvers, state machine, timeouts, and log history. The issue comes in when I try to look at approvals. My goal would be to send an approval, have the individuals look at history, review other's responses, and not have it timeout. I have a column in SP that updates the individuals that have not responded when the Flow times out after 29 days 😆. The Flow will rerun with the approvers in this column and keep the log history in another column.

I have played around with Flow approvals, Adaptive Cards, and Actionable Messages. In each case, there doesn't seem to be a full solution. Something as simple as this would work, but triggered by Flow.

Flow Approvals:

Spoiler

Flow approvals shows responses of others but if there is no action in 30 days, the Flow will not record responses of others. Example of a Flow that timed out after 1 minute, but the Flow cannot add responses from approval to SP. It will also not record individuals that have responded in the output of the approval step; therefore I cannot only send the unresponsive individuals the approval again.

<DIV class="lia-spoiler-noscript-content">Flow approvals shows responses of others but if there is no action in 30 days, the Flow will not record responses of others. Example of a Flow that timed out after 1 minute, but the Flow cannot add responses from approval to SP. It will also not record individuals that have responded in the output of the approval step; therefore I cannot only send the unresponsive individuals the approval again. </DIV>

Adaptive cards:

Spoiler

I looked into adaptive cards. This might be slightly above my head so here are my thoughts. There is a new feature called Universal Action Model that displays information in Outlook and Teams but uses a bot (similar to approvals mixed with PVA). It also refreshes the content at the time of display. I tried to execute this using the adaptivecard.io designer but couldn't get V1.4 to work. I also tried to use Bot Framework Composer but was lost as well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/adaptive-cards/authoring-cards/universal-action-model<DIV class="lia-spoiler-noscript-content">I looked into adaptive cards. This might be slightly above my head so here are my thoughts. There is a new feature called Universal Action Model that displays information in Outlook and Teams but uses a bot (similar to approvals mixed with PVA). It also refreshes the content at the time of display. I tried to execute this using the adaptivecard.io designer but couldn't get V1.4 to work. I also tried to use Bot Framework Composer but was lost as well. <A href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/adaptive-cards/authoring-cards/universal-action-model" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/adaptive-cards/authoring-cards/universal-action-model</A></DIV>

Actionable Messages:

Spoiler

With actionable messages, you have something similar to adaptive cards and refresh with autoInvokeAction. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/auto-invoke
I would have to invoke SP Web API. I am unfamiliar with it, so unsure if it would work. It seems like Adaptive cards is here to replace this functionality however. <DIV class="lia-spoiler-noscript-content">With actionable messages, you have something similar to adaptive cards and refresh with autoInvokeAction. <A href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/auto-invokeI" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/auto-invokeI</A> would have to invoke SP Web API. I am unfamiliar with it, so unsure if it would work. It seems like Adaptive cards is here to replace this functionality however. </DIV>

Any suggestions would be helpful! Thanks in advance!

lokeshpatel · ‎01-18-2022

@Cam

What I ended up doing was going into the dataverse and adjusting the line item of the approval. If there is no response within 29 days, I "cancel" that line item. This will update the adaptive cards on all system. If you need more details, please let me know!

View solution in original post

Anonymous · ‎10-20-2021

I don't know if this can help but I found this video that explain how to avoid Flow's timeout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EyuQjW8u_E

Cam · ‎01-14-2022

hello @lokeshpatel

adaptive card v1.4 are now rendering properly in teams, when sent from Power Automate via the Flow Bot

(using the 'Post Adaptive Card and Wait for a Response' action)

I've not yet found a good way to update the adaptive card after the flow times out 😐
but hopefully you find a way, now that v1.4 is available in teams.

lokeshpatel · ‎01-18-2022

@Cam

What I ended up doing was going into the dataverse and adjusting the line item of the approval. If there is no response within 29 days, I "cancel" that line item. This will update the adaptive cards on all system. If you need more details, please let me know!