Having dynamic approvers based on the Requester

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I developed a simple approval flow with send an email, update item action. The flow has only one approver to approve or rejct the item. Now, I have another requirement to use dynamic approvers based on the Requester who submits the request.

So for example if User A submits the request then Manager A would be the approver and If User B submits the request, the approver will be Manager B not Manager A. Is this possible to achieve using Flow? I am open to create a list that will contain relationship between Users and Managers if that can be easier to use here. 

Please help if smeone knows how to tackle this, thanks in advance.

[ScottShearer · Accepted solution]

Give this a try:

Before starting the approval, use the Get Manager V2 action to retrieve the manager of the individual who is submitting the request.  Then use that value as the approver.

In my example, I am using the For a Selected item trigger, but you can use other triggers.

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot Scott. I have some Questions:

1. The User(UPN) under Get Manager action, how is it going to account for which manager is assigned to which requester? I mean how can we retrieve manager for a requester, Do we have to store that somehwere in the list? I do not want requester to populate who their manager is, any suggestions? Sorry but I got confused in this step.

2. Under Start an Approval process, Assigned to has Mail populated, is this going to  take the value from Get Manager -> User Email?

[ScottShearer]

@Anonymous- in answer to your questions

1) I am assuming that everyones manager has been defined inside of Office 365 (Exchange)

2) Yes, the approval is assigned via a Dynamic property (Mail) from Get Manager

[Anonymous]

Hi Scott,

Thanks again for getting back to me. Unfortunately the client is a small firm having 20-25 employees. What is the other way to do this? What if I have a seperate list containing two columns as User and Manager as people picker fields and then use flow to automate it, will it work?Can you share an example please if possible. Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Hi Scott,

Just got a confirmation that I can manually populate manager for each employee since we only have about 22 employees in place. Wanted to know, is this something I can populate from 365 Admin itself for each active user? The exchange is not used, outlook is in use for email. Thanks again.

[ScottShearer]

I will provide an example of using a lookup later today or tomorrow.  That said, it would be much easier to simply go into the Office 365 Admin section for Exchange and add managers for each user there.  Will take you less than an hour assuming that you have the permissions to do so.  If you don't have permissions, ask the Exchange admin to do it for you.  Doing it that way is a much better solution.  I am assuming that you are using Office 365.

My lookup solution will be based on this post

[Anonymous]

Scott,

Thanks, yes we are using Office 365. I belive the manager field population is supposed to be done from Exchange properties like you mentioned. No rush, when you have time, please let me know about the lookup solution.

Thanks again for helping.

[Anonymous]

Any Update Scott? I just want to know an alternate approach if in case the one you suggested does not work.

When you have time, can you please share the lookup based approach as well, thanks.

[Anonymous]

hi Scott,

Quick question, as you showed using mail to send email to based on the get manager action, if i have to include this manager's name in the email body something like below, what should i use to show manager's name dynamically?

Best Regards,

Manager (how to show this as display name dynamically based on requester)

[ScottShearer]

To use the managers name, select Display Name from the Get Manager V2 group in Dynamic properties.

Scott

[ScottShearer]

@Anonymous- Here is an example of doing a filter/lookup on a person or group column.

In my example, I have a list where the employees and managers are listed.  The employee is in the column titled Person and the manager in the Manager column.

When a new item is created in a list, I lookup the manager of the person who created the item - Created By is just a person or group column.

Please note the syntax in the filter - you must use EMail vs email or Email.

Once I retrieve the manager, I start an approval.  Note that I am in a for each loop.  That is because, technically, Get Items could return more than 1 item.  That will not be the case, however, because each person is in the Manager list only once.  So you don't need to worry about multiple approvals being kicked off.

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Scott

[Priscila_L]

Hi @ScottShearer @Anonymous ,

Does this function the same way if using Forms as the initial input i.e. in place of SharePoint item?  I would ideally like a Form request to be approved by the requestor's manager before being emailed to my team for action.

Thanks in advance for any support/advice you can offer.

Priscila 

[ScottShearer]

@Priscila_L 

Yes - The Flow would be almost identical - it would start like this:

[Priscila_L]

Thank you @ScottShearer I'll give that a go 🙂