Approval flow Approving/Rejecting wrong paper/object

[Anonymous]

I am in the final testing and almost ready to go live with an approval process for White Papers.  We were "stress" testing the flow to see what would happen when several people started loading several papers at once.  We found if a user loads a paper to be approved and immediately loads a second paper, both papers are either approved or rejected even though the second approval has not been received in e-mail.

1. is where the first approval e-mail came in.  The approving manager approved the paper.

2. is the e-mail received showing the orginal paper was approved.

3. is an e-mail showing the second paper is approved but at the time the approval e-mail from the second paper had not been received.

4. is the approval e-mail and the approving manager rejected the paper.

Approval LogNext step Condition Fail

You can see where the approver rejected the paper and then the Flow failed at the condition.  Like maybe it was confused since the paper was already approved (incorrectly) and e-mail set out.  If we slow down and wait about 2 mins between uploads the Flow works as it is supposed to.  One other note;  The does not happen between users doing the up loading.  So if Suzie loads two papers back to back it fails.  If Suzie loads a paper and Tom loads a paper at the same time, the flow works as designed.  What is going on and how can this be corrected?  When we get into production, slowing down is really not an option.  Bug maybe?

K

[v-yamao-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

There are some updates on the approval actions. Now there are four actions could be used for approval:

Besides, there is no email will be sent to you when a response is submitted. In your case, no email 2 will be sent to you when the file has been approved.

I have made some tests on my side by creating a flow likes below.

It is always working fine even though I upload 2 or more files at the same time. The issue you mention in email 3 doesn’t occur. Each response will be correctly recorded.

I would suggest you take another try with the action Start and wait for an approval.

Best regards,

Mabel

[Anonymous]

Let me try to describe the problem another way. My Flow works much like what you, Mabel,  set up. The user uploads a document to be approved. The Approving Manager receives an e-mail to either Approve or Reject the e-mail. When the Approving manager has submitted the decision, the Flow goes to a condition, and based on approved or reject, will then send an e-mail to the person who originally uploaded the file informing them of the name of the document and whether it was approved or rejected.

One other point I would like to clarify. Multiple documents are not be uploaded at the same time. A single document is being uploaded and has a unique id and immediately another single document is being uploaded with its own id. This means multiple Flows are being triggered a few seconds apart.

I will refer back to my original images in the discussion.

1. Suzie uploaded a document named AR Drafts E1.doc and checked it in.
2. Suzie uploaded a different document named OneWorld Employee Master Troubleshooting and checked it in.
3. The approving manager received the e-mail (1) and approved the document AR Drafts E1.doc
4. Suzie received the e-mail approving AR Drafts E1.docx (2)
5. Suzie received the e-mail approving OneWorld Employee Master Troubleshooting (3), however the approving manager had not received the approval. If you look close and compare (2) and (3) you will see the subject line for both e-mail refer to AR Drafts E1.docx, however (3) is for the second document OneWorld Employee Master Troubleshooting Suzie uploaded.
6. Now the approving manager received the approval (4) for the OneWorld Employee Master Troubleshooting paper and rejected the document BUT the Flow failed. I am guessing it failed because the troubleshooting paper was approved by the previous flow.

So the question still remains, how can a single flow, approve a document that is not a part of its instance.