Error displaying correct Approval comments within Flow e-mails

[LisaJ]

Hi 

I have built a relatively simple flow:

- Employee complete Form

- HR receive an Approval mail with various bits of data from the form

- HR Approve with comments which generates a mail to the employee and an Approval mail to Finance. OR HR Reject which generates a mail to the employee only.

- Finance then Approve with comments which generates a mail to the employee and a mail to payroll.

All the above is working without issue OTHER than that the only comments that are displaying in the e-mails are the HR comments. I cannot get the Finance comments to display. I am using different fields (Comments (which i think are HR) and Responses Comments (which i think is Finance) ) but both show the HR wording.

Help! Can anyone tell me where I have gone wrong.

Thanks
Lisa

[edgonzales]

@LisaJ 

Hi there.  So, I think that it's treating each layer as a separate Approval, so when you're building your email you'll want to make sure that you're grabbing the comments from both steps.  Renaming the Approval steps will help pick out which is which later on.  Here's a pic:

Hope this helps, keep us posted.

-Ed-

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[LisaJ]

Thanks @edgonzales 

That has kind of helped in that it shows me that the dynamic content is not picking up the content from the Finance Approval step. 
Can you tell me how to pick that up? I'm guessing I've got the settings wrong where I select output here as I am only collecting the form responses:

[edgonzales]

@LisaJ 

Progress!  That's awesome.  Can you post a screenshot of your flow?  Specifically, something that shows both approval steps?

That might help.

-Ed-

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[LisaJ]

Hi @edgonzales 

Thanks for your continued interest in my problem!

Here are a few screenshots. I've highlighted where I think the issue is. 

Let me know if you need to see more.

Best

Lisa

[edgonzales]

@LisaJ 

It's my pleasure to help out.  You are very close!  In fact, if you change "Responses" in your condition to "Outcome", that should get rid of those Apply to Each loops and make the email part more manageable.

If you think of every approval as having the possibility to go to many people, "Responses" would be the individual things that come back from each person.  "Outcome" would be the overall result based on the 'rules' you set when you created the Approval ("First to respond", "Everyone must approve").  Since there could be multiple 'Responses', Power Automate triggers an "Apply to Each" loop when you select that field, so that it can cycle through all of them.

With "Outcome" however, much like Highlanders and Lords of Rings, 'there can be only one', so that won't trigger a loop.

Accessing dynamic values inside and outside loops can get complicated, too.  That may be why you're not seeing all of the options.  My hope is that once you've cleaned things up, you should be able to send the email with all of the information.

Keep us posted.

-Ed-

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[LisaJ]

Hi @edgonzales 

I hope you had a great weekend.

Sorry that I am not getting this, but where so I select Outcome from? I can't see it as an option.

Thanks

Lisa

[edgonzales]

@LisaJ 

Hi there.  You'll want to click in the condition box.  That's what is going to decide how the approval finally turned out...

I'll take a closer looks and sketch something out to follow also, in a moment.

-Ed-

[edgonzales]

@LisaJ 

Ok, I think this might help.  See if you can get yours to look something like this:

Keep us posted.

-Ed-

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[LisaJ]

@edgonzales 
I am not getting "outcome" as an option. 
It's driving me bonkers as I can see that is where the issue is but can't work out how to fix it.
I might start building it from scratch again.

[edgonzales]

When you added the Approval - Which did you do?

  

[LisaJ]

Hi @edgonzales 

I didn't desert you - I had problems accessing Power Automate!

This is the approval I used:

I started from one of the templates. I think it was this one: https://emea.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/galleries/public/templates/7b33edae61a74e79ba015ce103b527fd/st...

I then added in extra actions / conditions.

Best

Lisa

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @LisaJ ,

Please do not use templates to create this Flow. The Start an approval action contained in it has not been updated to the latest version, so Outcome cannot be output.

You can create blank new flow based on the configuration in the template.

Best Regards,

[LisaJ]

Hi @v-bacao-msft 

Why is the template available if it is not the latest version?

Is there no way to change the Start an approval action to the latest version without rebuilding the whole flow?

I am quite frustrated by your response.

Regards

Lisa

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @LisaJ ,

I'm sorry that it bothers you.

Flow templates can be used, but the actions contained in them may not be the latest version. The action in the template will not automatically update the corresponding action with the new release, it will still retain the version used by the previous action.

If you create a Flow from the blank, you can find that the currently available Approval actions and the approval actions used in the template are different, resulting in you being unable to obtain Outcome.

Reconfiguring the entire Flow is really troublesome. You can replace the Approval action directly on the current configuration, which should be easier.

Please take a try.

Best Regards,

[LisaJ]

Hi @v-bacao-msft 

The lovely @edgonzales helped me yesterday and I have built a new flow.

I still think that you should clean up Templates that are no longer up to date.

Best

Lisa

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @LisaJ ,

If you can submit your feedback in the ideas forum this will be of great help to improve such situations:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Ideas/idb-p/MPAIdeas

Also glad you have solved your problem. If you have any other questions about Building Flow, just ask.

Best Regards,