Help designing a proper document approval flow

[AndrewGeddes]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks up front for your help on this, my goal in life is to avoid Classic Workflows for this if at all possible, I just haven't found the right approach and hoped your collective wisdom could help.

• Any document uploads or modifications to doclib require approval by 4 named people
• If approved 
  • From admin perspective, would be best to trigger document from draft/pending to approved once flow completes
  • Alternatively, we could copy doc to a new location but initial doc would need to stay in place to keep history intact 
• If not approved
  • Notification would go back to modifier with comments and flow can be triggered again once updated

Any guidance would be much appreciated.  I've got the classic workflow but it's ugly and more difficult for the admin of the space to maintain - Flow would make things much easier and more elegent.  Thanks all.

[Pieter_Veenstra]

Hi @AndrewGeddes,

In general (this is not just Microsoft Flow) I would keep my flows that are triggered short. So that means that a document is uplooded/changed the flow starts then depending on the document/item  properties it does a few steps and then it end waiting for the next chnage to the document/item. This then triggers the Flow again and so on.

So typically you will find that you would use some conditions or paralel branches near the start of the Flow.

Quite often I see people create a 4 person approval created as a single flow that goes through the approvals sequentually and then you will struggle to make the Flow not trigger multiple times.

[v-xida-msft]

Hi @AndrewGeddes,

Do you want the uploaded/modified file to receive approval response from each of 4 named approvers?

I think Microsoft Flow could achieve your needs, I have made a test on my side and the flow fires when a file uploaded or modifed in my SharePoint library.

I have created a custom column to indicate if the file is approved and another custom column to indicate if the file is modified, the data structure of my SharePoint library as below:

Note: ApprovalStatus column is a custom column, which is a Choice type column with 3 built-in options (Pending, Approved and Rejected) and the default value of it is Pending. IsModified column is a custom column, which is a Yes/No type column and the default value of it is No. The IsModified column indicates if the file is modified, when the requestors modify the uploaded file, they should change the value of IsModified column into Yes.

Please take a try with the following workaround:

• Add a "When a file is created or modified (properties only)" trigger.
• Add a Condition, click "Edit in advanced mode", type the following formula:

@or(equals(triggerBody()?['ApprovalStatus']?['Value'], 'Pending'),equals(triggerBody()?['IsModified'], true))

• Within "If/yes" branch of Condition, add a "Start an approval" action, Approval Type set to Everyone from the assigned list, Assigned To field set to the email addresses of 4 approvers.

         Add a "Condition 2", left input box set to Response dynamic content of "Start an approval" action, right input box set to Approve, within middle drop down, choose is equal to.

       Within "If/yes" branch of Condition 2, add a "Update file properties" action, specify Site Address and List Name. Id field set to ID dynamic content of the trigger, ApprovalStatus value field set to Approved.

       Within "If/no" branch of Condition 2, add a "Update file properties 2" action, specify Site Address and List Name. Id field set to ID dynamic content of the trigger, ApprovalStatus value field set to Rejected. Then add a "Send an email" action to notify that modify the uploaded file and request again.

Image reference:

Best regards,

Kris

[Pieter_Veenstra]

I also created a blog post here about the aprpaoch I would follow: 

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Flow-Community-Blog/Develop-Flows-Like-a-Pro/ba-p/8989...

Hopefully this will help.