Change Approval tasks from Active to Inactive

[karenlacey]

I want to clean up abandoned approval tasks. I have found the table 'Approvals' within the dataverse area. 

In my flow I have added this after an approval time out so it will change the status from Active to Inactive. 

I have followed these instructions but keep getting an error. Has anyone been successful? 

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

Instead of marking them inactive it would be easier just to delete that row.  That will have essentially the same effect.  The approval will be removed from the pending approvals pane.

[karenlacey]

this is why it is always good to ask, yes delete row makes sense as users will never care about seeing that approval task status in a database. There is no use for it after the workflow ends. I have now used Delete Row and it has removed it from the table. In Outlook I get Requested Item is unavailable and in MS Teams I get a correlation error.

Sorted thanks so much 

[Pstork1]

Unfortunately, there is no way to clean up the reference in Outlook or Teams that I am aware of.

[karenlacey]

Hi, by deleting the row in the Approvals table it stops the task being submitted. It alerts the user that the request no longer exists so they cannot press submit. In Teams the task now comes up with a correlation ID which alerts the user that it no longer exists. 

This is good enough for me. The user knows that they cannot action any longer rather than being misled to believe that they have submitted a response.