Approvals Timeout Group

[mvaladez]

Hello all.

Created a PTO form using Microsoft Forms, which sends approval to their supervisor via email and teams. After 3 days, the approval will timeout and notify everyone within a group, which I have to manually add everyone's emails (annoying part). Now more states of the same company want to use the PTO form. I know I could have an option on the form to select a branch location, so when the timeout triggers it can notify those individuals. Just trying to think of an easier way with maybe an Excel document lookup or something so I don't have to add a ton of conditions based on a branch location when the timeout triggers.

The issue let's say when I request PTO and my manager doesn't respond within the allowed time who to ping next? The manager could be busy, something could've happened to the manager scenario. I've also built the flow to where it's stored in an excel document, so approvals can now be reviewed weekly that are outstanding to help the management team.

Any feedback or suggestions is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: I did watch one of Reza videos on how to get manager if the original approver doesn't respond. This could possibly work, but wanted to look into a pinging several people.

[wskinnermctc]

My feedback is not using Excel to store or lookup anything. Use a SharePoint list instead for whatever lookups or requests to review.

If you build this flow using SharePoint list(s), lets say a SPList-Requests, SPList-Approvers, SPList-Divisions, and any anything else. This will allow you to lookup users and request using PowerAutomate much more effectively than trying to deal with Excel lists. (Nothing wrong with an Excel output like weekly report, but it should be sourced from a SharePoint list.)

The more you can think about things in SharePoint lists, the easier flows will be to organize. The next benefit will be using a Power App instead of a MS Form. A PowerApp will build really well off of SharePoint list sources. And you can have dynamic fields in a PowerApp.

I know that seems like a lot of extra work, but if you think about iteration of improvement (especially if more of the company/states are using the MS Form), the process needs to grow into using a PowerApp. Having the SharePoint list base will make that much easier.

(Better than SharePoint lists are Dataverse tables, but you can get there eventually.)