flow to send a out approvals for a document library at certain times in a day

[resolver101757]

Hello i would like to send a flow at a certain time (Scheduled flow) in a day rather than when a file has Created/modified.  We dont need the instant flow (when a file is modified/created) and it saves the flows we use.  Is this possible? if, whats the best method to achieve this? 

[tom_riha]

Hello @resolver101757 ,

such solution would be more complicated than running a flow for each document. To process multiple files you'd need to include a parallel running loop in the flow that would create approval task for each of the documents. That loop would run until all the documents are approved, and since it'll be a loop, you won't see the process for each of the files until the whole loop finishes. Not to mention use of variables in parallel branches. 

Regarding the flow runs, you'd have just 1 flow started every day, but as said such flow would run until everything is approved. And you'd save only flow runs, not API calls as you'd still need to do all the steps for each file.

To summarise it, I don't think it's a good approach for approval flows, there's no benefit except the reduction in number of flows.

[resolver101757]

Appreciate the explanation, understood, single flow it is 🙂  When I create a single flow, I only want the flow to run when the column "approver" has a value.  Should I start the flow off with a "When a file is created or modified (properties only)" and then place a condition to check for when the approver is blank?  or is there a better way to do this?  My thinking is that there might be a lot of flows running and taking up our allocation when its not actually running anything because approver condition check is false.

[tom_riha · Accepted solution]

Hello @resolver101757 ,

it would be better to use a trigger condition to trigger the flow only if the field has value (3 dots on the trigger -> Settings -> trigger condition at the bottom), e.g.

@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/Approver'], null))

Note: Approver is internal name of the 'Approver' people picker column, yours might be different

[resolver101757]

Thanks for taking the time to answer the query.  I was sure what the trigger condition was, I thought it was its own trigger and was sure where the setting was.  Anyway found it and used "When a file is created or modified (properties only)" and change the settings as on the other screen.  Posted details for anyone else reading