Delete all assigned tasks when an Approval action times out

[asifkhawaja]

When an approval is assigned to multiple people (with any one can approve), and if any one of the assigned approvers approves/rejects the task, all other assigned tasks to other people are automatically removed from the approvals section. This is good.

However, if no one from the assigned people approves/rejects and there is a time out set at say 5 days, then the approval times out in 5 days but the tasks still remain visible in the Approvals section. 

Can the tasks automatically be removed when the approval times out to avoid creating the clutter in the Approvals section (just like they are all removed automatically when one of the approvers completes his/her assigned task)? I think currently these are removed after the default 30 days but they should be removed immediately after the approval times out.

[EricaBao · Accepted solution]

There is a way to cancel an approval request but it requires that the flow maker to have certain environment permissions.  Approval requests are stored in the common data service in the Approvals entity. If you have write access to the entity then you can change the status of the Approval to canceled after it times out. This will remove the request from their queue.  

[Pstork1]

Yes they can be removed by deleting the from the Approvals entity (Table) using the CDS connector.  The only issue is that the CDS connector is Premium, but if you have the license it can be done fairly easily.  However, this cannot remove the email that was sent to each approver.  But it will remove the approval from the approval panel in Flow.

[asifkhawaja]

Thanks @Pstork1 and @EricaBao. This is good except that the Start approval action returns an empty/null Approval ID when it times out. The Approval ID is not empty when I action the approval (approve or reject). So as a work around I used two separate actions, Create approval to create the approval and then Wait for an approval for timing out purpose. When timed out I used the Approval ID returned from the Create approval action and it worked! 

One would expect the Approval ID would always be provided whether it times out or not. 

[Pstork1]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that you have to use the Asynchronous pattern for approvals with the Create an Approval action and then the Wait for approval.  So that you can access the Approval ID.  I normally use this for escalation in a parallel branch.  In that case you have to split create and wait or the approval ID is only available in the branch where it is created.  I suspect the same thing is happening in the case of a timeout.

[denisaZah]

Hi, @Pstork1 @asifkhawaja @EricaBao. I have the same problem that you had and I tried to use your solution but I can't find the activities that you use 😕. 

I have a flow that creates a successor approval and than waits for a successor approval with a timeout of 2 minutes. After that, if the successor does not respond to the request, I need to send a new one and delete the old one from the Approvals section. Can please one of you guide me through this? Specifying exactly what activities should I use and the settings I need to make? Thanks!!