Approvers from SharePoint list

[scutiyog]

Hi all,

I know this is asked many times and I have read them but I think mine is a little different (probably easier I just can't seem to work it out).

So I have a change request library where a user fills in a standard SP list item and submits.  On submit, I need to run a 2 level approval process.

The first level is fine - it's the owner of a template the user selects in the change request and it's always a single person and I can get that easily enough in my flow and assign an approval them.  Works great.

The 2nd level is where I am asking for assistance on the best way to go about it. 

Basically the 2nd level approval(s) have to go to about 14 different studio groups.  Each of the studios can have 2-4 approvers in it and I only need 1 of them to approve/reject.

Now I have done it before where I can get the members of an SP group, append their emails, assign them the approval task.... but do would I have to then create 14 SP groups and then do 14 Send HTTP requests to get each set and assign to variables?

I read up on the topic and saw the use of a SharePoint list to house the approvers... Ok I made a list called Approvers, one column called Studio and one called Approvers (people picker, allow multiple persons is set to Yes)

But again to get each studio group of approvers into a variable that I can then assign an approval task to, do I have to do a Get Items 14 times specifying the ID each time? This was the way I saw being done here - https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Community-Blog/Get-Approvers-Dynamically-from-Sha... 

This is what I see all other threads doing it seems - there is some ID you use, or some other column like Department or Country that is specified in the original trigger....which I don't really have...….I just need to be able to pull the 14 studio groups - get their approvers listed and assign them an approval for every single submission.

Oh and to have the 14 studios all get their approvals all at once it would be parallel?  Don't need them to have to wait on each other - after the first approval we are basically giving each studio their chance to approve/reject the request but it needs to be concurrent.

Looking for ideas on how to do this effectively as for some reason I can't seem to get my head around it other than to do a Get Items 14 times...I am probably missing some super easy but it's just isn't getting through my thick skull 😄

Any ideas/help is, as always, appreciated!

Thanks!

[Pstork1]

You will need to send out 14 "First to Approve" approvals, one to each studio.  The users for each studio will need to be in a semicolon delimited list of emails. You can then send the 14 approvals in a loop, but to do them in parallel you'll need to change the parallelism setting of the loop so they all go out at the same time.  For the list of users, if it doesn't change frequently, I would create a SharePoint list with 14 records.  One of the fields in each record is a semicolon delimited string of email addresses for that studio.  You can do a single Get Items on that list, then an Apply to Each on what that returns (set to run parallel) and inside the loop use the value of the string from each record to address the approval.

[scutiyog]

Hi @Pstork1 

Thanks for reply.  I figured I would have to have the 14 different approvals and thank you for the loop and degree or parallelism - I will look at that (having not done that before).

But i am still hazy on the getting the correct reviewers assigned to the correct approval task
- 
I have the list with the approvers - 

Studio	Reviewers
Studio 1234	PeoplePicker1; PeoplePicker2
Studio 4321	PeoplePicker1;PeoplePicker2;PeoplePicker3

So I have a Get Items and then I did an apply to each from the value of that Get Items and inside it I thought I would need to place a Append to String Variable to the Reviewers Email; (dynamic content)

How would I filter it?  It just throws me back all the emails, but I still need to be able to group them by Studio and then assign the Studio it's approval task.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are suggesting - but even if I had a column where I break out the email addresses in the SharePoint list - I'm still not sure how I can assign the proper reviewers to the proper studio variable in my flow to assign them approval tasks.

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

I may not be getting what you want either, but I thought you were saying that each item has to be approved by all 14 studios.  So if you do a get items on the list you gave an example of then the first time through the loop you would already have the semicolon delimited list of approvers for Studio 1234.  you just assign them an approval.  The next time through the loop you'll have the list of approvers for Studio 4321.  14 entries in the list and 14 loops = 14 approvals.  If you set the degree of parallelism you'll get all 14 simultaneously.  No need to do any appending, since its already done in the list.

[scutiyog]

No you are right, each item has to be approved by all 14 studios. And I think I am getting it now lol sorry to be slow...and you are right I like the idea of getting the semicolon delimited emails without having to worry about appending...

one last thing though - the loop 😆

Can you explain a little how i create that portion or is it called something else as i do not see any actions for loop 

[Pstork1]

There are two looping actions Apply to Each and Do Until.  The Apply to Each is the one you want.