Use cases for "Start..." --> "Wait for an approval" VS "Start and wait for an approval"?

[Anonymous]

I'm a bit confused about when to use these related actions.

Is my commentary accurate? Are there other differences?

Specifically, I am trying to capture status and comments from a list of reviewers, in more-or-less real time.

The following pattern (shared by other selfless experts in this forum) works pretty well:

but it only writes the responses back to my SharePoint library properties at the end of the entire Approval process; i.e., after every Reviewer has responded.

I am thinking of experimenting with combinations of:

• a Parallel approval process
• "Start", then "Wait" -- or "Start and wait"
• collecting and evaluating the Approved/Rejected results of each parallel process to mimic "Wait for all responses" to ultimately approve or reject the submitted file

Would any other selfless experts care to offer their hard-won experience in reply?

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

If you create an approval that has multiple approvers then neither pattern will let you do anything with the replies until after everyone has replied.  The reason both patterns are supported is because occasionally you want to do other things with the approval details before sending the approval or want to do something with the approval in a parallel thread. 

For example, a common request is to be able to send a reminder with a link to the approval if its not completed within a particular timeframe.  Sending the reminder is easily done in a parallel branch, but you need a reference to the approval itself to be able to send a link in the reminder.  So you create the approval, then create the parallel branches.  In one branch you wait for the response and in the other you do the reminder after a pause. Unless you create it before entering the parallel branch you won't be able to send a link.

[Pstork1]

Just to add to my reply.   Using either action to create and wait for the approval works the same way.  You'll need to do each approval separately in a parallel branch.  All the parallel branches will need to finish before the flow will be able to move on.  But you will be able to do things inside each branch to react to the individual approvals.