Email notifications and Comments

[DanHansen]

Hello All,

I have built an approval flow to manage approvals of files in a document library on a workspace. The approval flow itself works, but I have two problems, that I simply can not figure out. I am hoping, that someone here might be able to see what I am doing wrong.

1. In my approval flow, I have setup a mail notification, which should send a link to the item. Problem is, it doesn't and I am not sure why. This is how my flow looks for this step:
   
   And this is what I get in the email notification:
   
   It worked for me yesterday, and the only thing I have changed, is adding a step in front of the approval flow, that changes the status of the document to "Pending" in the document library:
   
   Is there something I am not seeing?
   
   
2. Secondly, I want to add the comments from the requester if the approval, into the comment section, of the version history of the document. Explaining this, hopefully, a bit clearer, I have added this step to the beginning of my workflow, presenting the initiator with a mandatory textfield to fill out:
   
   Then when the flow reaches the stage of changing the status to "Approved" I am trying to add back in the comments from the initiator, to use this as a kind of change log of the document:
   
   
   What I am hoping to achieve, is to update the version history of the document, with those comments. Is that even achievable? I realize there may be concerns around the quality of those comments.
   
   
   

Thank you in advance for your comments.

Best regards,

Dan

[ScottShearer]

Adding comments to a version history only happens when you check in a document and Flow does not (yet) support checking documents out/in.   To achieve your goal you'll want to call the SharePoint API from within your Flow. 

Sorry.....

If this answers your question, please mark your post as Solved.

Scott

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @DanHansen ,

For your first question, could you share all the screenshots of your Flow configuration?

I did a test on my side, configure Link to item in the Item link, the link can be displayed normally, and has nothing to do with the configuration of other actions.

For the second question, as Scott described, comments can only be added to Version history when the file is checked in, so if there is no similar check-out, it is impossible to add comments.

For the operation of using Rest API to implement file check-in, please refer to the link below:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Allow-to-check-in-check-out-and-publish-files-in-a-Sh...

Best Regards,

[DanHansen]

Hello Barry and Scott,

Thank you for your responses. I will dig into the API, and see if I can figure out the API calls for check-in/check-out.

As for documenting the remainder of me workflow, as you requested Barry:

Best regards,

Dan

[DanHansen]

Hello,

I just wanted to share an update on my problem with the email notification, not sending a link to the item that was sent for approval.

I managed to resolve this, by changing the ID pointer in the set approval content. Using the ID pointer from "Get file metadata" does not work with this type of flow, probably because I am working on files in document libraries, and not in a list. By changing this to the ItemId pointer, it started sending the item links again.

Reading the small text does help. 

Best regards,

Dan