Dynamic Approvers & log history with Power Automate Approvals 

Just been following the steps to use the people picker column (21:46), but adding the Approvers Email is throwing in another Apply to Each. I tried following the rest of the step anyway but the flow failed and gave me this error message: "The execution of template action 'Apply_to_each_8' failed: the result of the evaluation of 'foreach' expression '@items('Apply_to_each_7')' is of type 'Object'. The result must be a valid array." Am I doing something wrong or does the video need an update?

Reza, you're a great teacher - I'm so glad I found your videos. Best stuff I've found after weeks of trying to learn how to set up Approvals in Power Automate

What an outstanding tutorial! Thank you Reza for putting this video out there for Power Automate learners!

Thank you so much Reza, this video is just what I needed to implement an approval process in my app. Love the cookbook series!

You just have a really great way of teaching so that people just get it. And the little suggestions that show attention to detail are so useful and make it easy for anyone to find a way to make the outputs of their flows so intuitive and user friendly. More power to you 🙂✨

Thank you Thank you Thank you Reza for each minute and sec you invest in the preparation of these vidoes and trying your best to make it simple for us to understand and going back and forth to diff tabs just in effort to making it easy for us to understand.

SInce long I was just thinking to develope this in my project, we had no clue of it and we kept this kind of things to be in the last bucket. Now this video has really helpful to me and we have develope the big componet on your idea. You are awsome. I am thankful to you and looking for such good videos on power apps which are not avaiable or people seeking for it.

Just completed my multiple approvals. Works great. Thank you!

Thank you so much for making this video! It was so helpful,. I have watched your expressions 101 and 201 and still learning, Thank you for providing examples of the tools and a way to understand them. Having a hard time converting UTC time but working on what i may have done incorrectly. Thanks!

Again Very well explained. I liked the 'Approver comment' concept which is helpful to understand to an end user in real case business scenario. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for just keeping it to the steps! Some "how to" videos are so hard to watch because they go on and on and on about nothing.. You are like do this do that do this do that and voila! I appreciate that so greatly!

Great video, as always the idea of the Audit Trail and the emojis very clever. Thanks

Always w/ great videos! Thanks Reza!

Wow, that is very comprehensive, thank you!

Great video. Especially Data Operations one was awesome...Thank you

Can I just say, this is an excellent tutorial!

Just an Amazing Video! Thank you!

Great teaching skills, Reza!

Woww!! Incredible Reza!!

Amazing! As always! Thanks

Great work raza bhai. waiting for more videos on dataverse.

Thank you for sharing this; it is quite helpful.

Very good explanation. thank you so much.

Thanks, Very professional.

very well explained - thank you Reza

Nice video Reza. Thanks 😊

thank you, you're a master!

Amazing!

Hi Reza, thank you for this very helpful video. What I liked a lot: 1. I was looking for a solution to send emails to users within a "multiple user" column. Thanks for your awesome explanation of how doing so. 2. Including the in depth view on the JSON queries is awesome. This helped me tremendously to understand and use this to my advantage 3. Potential Video Idea: What are the options we flow creators have, to ensure data protection of the users of the flow? This is the final thing I'm struggling with in my workflow: In the very last step, my workflow grabs a file from a SharePoint library. The file got uploaded by a random user, initially triggering the workflow. Once all approvals are in, the file is sent automatically via a Send an Email (V2) action to a person in HR. Unfortunately, this email appears in my outlook mailbox within "sent items" including the attachment. --> question is: what are my options to keep the file secure and hidden from myself? Using service accounts? Deleting the email from my sent items folder? Or can the flow be initialized under another user in the first place? I fear that this will be the end of my otherwise very helpful workflow :(

Reza, as others have said your videos are great. You are direct and straight to the point. Very easy to follow. Quick question, could you share how you inserted emojis in the flow? I would like to learn how to do this. Thanks.

Good & Easily understandable

Thanks, Reza.

I started watching all your videos…it really helped me so much in learning power apps and flows…I would like to request you to show how can we log history for multiple approves…I mean like parallel approvera

Just incorporating your approval steps here into my flow and gotten an error at the "approval" step. Error message of "BadRequest. The request failed. Error code: 'InvalidApprovalCreateRequestAssignedToMissing'. Error Message: 'Required field 'assignedTo' is missing or empty.'." My assigned to field is using the varApproved variable according to your video. Not sure where it went wrong. Also would like to add that you've been my Power Automate savior. Especially to those without much IT/coding knowledge, your video has been super helpful so far.... Cheers mate!

Great video! Very clear explanation! Question for you, what if all the approvers must approve the item?

Thanks

Great video Reza, so helpful - however I have a question that was not answered here, maybe you have in another video? How can we configure the approvers from the SharePoint Site owners group?

Hi Reza. First of all, thank you very much for your videos, I have never seen such detailed intricacy in any tutorial I have encountered. I praise your great work and clear explanation throughout all your videos and tutorials. Simply wonderful! I have been able to create the same concept in your video, but through a document library to have dynamically grabbed approvers from a list I created in my SharePoint site. I have tested the workflow and it triggers correctly, with the status (Draft, Approved, Rejected) correctly marking, and the flow is running successfully when tested. However, I have noticed that the approval request notification reaches the approver multiple times, even after the approval or rejection is completed. Also, I noticed that, after the document is approved or rejected, its status returns to "Draft" in the sharepoint library to which this workflow is connected. Any idea on why this is the case? I see check marks (marking that the work ran successfully) as well. Your advice would be greatly supported.

Amazing video as always :) Is there any tutorial for creating the Sharepoint list as you have created, as I am new to the Sharepoint ?

Thoroughly enjoyed your videos @Reza--very informative and well-presented. Following the steps for the people picker (also on 21:45), and not erroring out (yay!), but somehow only getting the first person in the people picker column. Wondering what I'm doing wrong and if anyone else has run into this behavior.

Thank you, definitely your videos save a lot of time! I am working on my version of these ideas and have a doubt: In a two parallel approval process flow in TEAMS, if one branch reject the document, left some comments or suggestions in the document assessed. Once rejected, I would like to edit the document that triggered the flow when it was moved into Files tab in TEAMS. When edition is completed in TEAMS, how can I restart the approval flow but only with the person/branch, that initially rejected it? Thank you for your ideas! Greetings from Argentina!

Thanks Reza

Dear Reza, many thanks for your fantastic approvals cookbook serie! I have a question on the dynamic approvers... taking your SharePoint list as example, is it possible to select both Marketing and Finance as department. I have enabled multiple choices on the list, but I am not succesful in creating the Power Automate approval. thanks for your help as always! :)

Hi Reza, Thank you for creating this tutorial. It really helped me understand the concepts and build an automated flow. I would like to ask you: What is the type of "Approval Comments" Column in your SharePoint List. I enabled versioning on my SharePoint list, created a Column of type: "Multiple lines of text" and checked "Append changes to existing text" to ensure the history is logged correctly. All comments are logged correctly EXCEPT that there is my name and date appearing before each comment automatcially. Also, I can see "View Entries" link to see the history instead of the comments directly in SharePoint. Can you kindly advice: 1. How did you setup your "Approval Comments" column in SharePoint List 2. How can I make sure that the comments are directly displayed in "Approval Comments" column, instead of "View Entries" hyperlink Thank you for your extended support.

Amazing video Raza! Thank you! A bit off-topic but is there a way an approver can recall/cancel their approval after approving the item, let’s say within 1 hour (let’s suppose in case something changes)?

Great video, simple and very clear explain, how do you use emoji? What’s keys to input emoji?

Thank you Reza! Your videos are very helpful. I have looked through the approval videos and I cannot seem to find out how to prevent the "pending" status from updating to "approved" until all approvers have responded... I am working from a document library approval flow.

Reza, thank you so much for making this helpful video. It is perfect for what I need right now. I really like the Approval Comments audit trail. I'm curious about the Approval Comments column settings. Are these the settings you used? multi-line, append changes to existing text on, enhanced rich text to support the emojis.

Thank you so much for making this video. How can we handle the scenario that the flow has been running halfway, waiting for approver to approve but we changed the approver from A to B?

May you share me the study part from Beginner to Pro Power Apps ? source and material please. All your video is amazing and clear.

Thanks a lot Reza for such a nice video.Could you let us know what would be the best approach for approval if we need to create purchase order requests in Bulk? Like, all purchase order details are in a file and all purchase orders listed in a file should go for approval one by one.

Hi Reza, i like the last part on "select" is there a way how to get the UPN from a people picker... keep in mind that not all users have emails

Yo the man !

It is really a nice video👍...I hope you will help me in addressing the issue : how to manually initiate 'item creation' flow in this tutorial scenario if flow trigger fails due to server load or any other reasons(low plan subscription)

Great tutorial! Thank you for this. I just have some questions regarding a scenario where there were multiple departments that needs to address the ticket and needs approval of each department. How is that possible?

Hi Reza. I have a question. On 6mins 41s of your video, how did you add multiple names under the Approvers column? I have been trying to add under this column using “person or group” type and it could only allow me to add 1 name. Would really appreciate your help 🙏🏻 You’ve helped me alot for the rest of your vid’s man.

Hi Reza, thank you for all your videos - they are a guiding light to get going. I've tried copying this approval flow using the current Power Automate and it keeps inserting for each loops everywhere (when in your video they do not appear). The nested loops keep complaining and failing when I try to implement the dynamic people picker, towards the end of the video (the Select, Join and Set functions). Any advice on how to stop these loops?

Amazing video thank you. What about creating this flow for a document library? AUtomate asks to select a List (*), but what if I want to set it up for the library and not the list?

Thanks Reza very useful video! Can you share how to show in the same Approvers column both the user profile picture and the name? Thx

Hi Reza.. thank you for this wonderful series on approvals.. am just stuck on how to add emoji while updating comments back to list 😒😒

BRAVO!!! really good video. one question. If you need to assign an approval action to SH security group . you can read using SH API all the user and get an emails? is there another simple way?

Thx Raza for you continuous great effort but I have a question if you could explain for us how you create the assigned to column in the Help disk list.

Thanks for the awesome video. I was doing an approval flow and I was using a hard text email in an excel table, so this is far better way. A question, how do you show the people's photo? I found that in the modern view you can't have it and you need to switch to the classic version. I think you are using the modern view, so how do you do it?

This is Awsome and great learning, please let me know where I have to begin with for mastering power Automation

Great Tutorial, how did you add the emoji !!

Hi Reza, this question might be a little out of scope of this particular tutorial but could you explain how you removed the Approval Status and Approval Comments columns from the modern forms? Did you simply edit the columns and remove them entirely or did you use conditional formatting to hide these? Currently these fields are displaying on my forms and do not want the users to be able to edit these directly. I would prefer to still display these fields as readonly on the forms without explicitly hiding them. It would be nice to see the Approval Comments when viewing the item directly in addition to the view column.

I have been searching for such a video for several months ! Thank you so much. My flow is a little bit different. My trigger is a manual and I'd like everyone to approve. I'd also like to keep trace of all approvals and comments. Is that possible? Does one of your flow explain that point? Thanks in advance for you help and thank you so much for all your explanations..

Hi Raza, Thanks for the video, Do you have any video with same scenario but for serial approvals flow ?

Hi Reza, thank you so much for this video, what do I need to do if I want to the form to automatically send to the email that the user entered in the list for approval? (In my list, I setup a column for the user to input their manager's email). I appreciate your help.

Thanks for the response, I have one more question. Can we freeze the first few columns in the Share point list, it helps full if we have so many fields. Can we make it work if we add List to MS Teams ?

Hi, first of all: great content in your cookbook, it's been a great help for me! I still have this question: do you have an example of dynamic approvers in this situation: Approver 1 approves, Approver 2 approvers, Approver 3 rejects => creator gets notification of rejection of Approver 3 and modifies the file => After reactivating the flow, Approver 1 and 2 does NOT get notification, only Approver 3... Txs for the reaction(s)

Hi Reza.. Thanks you for this great Video. How did you make the "Approval Comments" field hidden when a new item is created/ when a new entry is added?

Hi Reza, Thank you for this very helpful video. I have a question. Is it possible to let the approvers to approve one by one? once the first approver approved, then go to the second approver

Hi Reza, Thank you for this video. This scenario shows only one approval (first to respond). In the department share point list, how do I put in 2 or 3 email addresses. The first approval needs to be approved before it moves to the second approval and then the third.

Thank you! This is more closer to my requirement..Just guide me on how to allow approver to add data in that form(edit access for few extra fields) currently it is only view access..when he got link of form by email along with approve & reject button..

@Reza - Thanks again for another great video! I had one question regarding the dynamic approvers using the 'get department' approver list with the people picker column. On the step where you use the 'select' operator and do the 'map' to the approvers email - when I try this, it adds another apply to each loop. In your video it did not. I continue with your steps but then i get an error "the result of the evaluation of 'for each' expression'@items('Apply_to_each')' is a type of 'Object'. The result must be a valid array." Any thoughts on what could be causing this?

Reza, just curious why using Get itemS vs Get item for your Department? How the Select Join (SQL vibes) would be impacted if Get item was used instead?

Great tutorial, thanks! Question: Is it possible to take this approvers tracking a step further? What would be really great is if you can track who needs to approve and whether or not they have done so. The log in your example will only show after every one has approved. I'd like to track the progress straight away after initiating the approval: So something like: Approver1: waiting approval Approver2: approved Approver3: waiting approval Approver4: rejected Perhaps you could do a video on that?

This helps me a lot. Next is how to log each approval. Let's say I have only one approval step. But, 'all must approve'. I need to log each approval date for each approver. It will go into a note column in my SP list. How do I do this? Or can you recommend a different solution? Basically, I'm building an approval process. Multi step. Your solution here works if each step has one approver. But I don't think it works if a step has more than one. TIA Reza

Thanks for this helpful video! how would one go about grabbing the approvers from the department list if they selected multiple departments? I have a form with multiple-choice options for affected departments and was wondering if it's a way to query the department list for multiple selections.

Great tutorial!I have a question, why does the assigned to column in the sharepoint list stay blank?

Great video! You mention that Approvers (multi-person) vs Approvers Text is easier to maintain but you reference 'Approvers Text' in the Flow. Why? I ask because I get a 'GraphLookUpRequestFailedError' in my Start and wait for approval when I attempt to reference the Approvers (multi-person) column instead.

thank you for your effort , what if I need to select more than one category (multi-select )

Great series Reza, thanks so much for taking the time to prepare these very useful videos. I am trying to replicate the dynamic approvers scenario in my own environment but every time I try to insert the Select action on the Approver Email entity the step is wrapped in a second "Apply to Each" loop. This fails when run because the output from the select is an object and it needs to be an array. I've followed your steps a dozen times and checked that the output from "Get Items" has the expected values (the Approvers are in an array, and each one has a single Email entity), but I'm at a loss why the flow editor keeps putting an Apply to Each loop around the Select action. I've searched online for several hours and I'm about to give up on Power Automate altogether. Any pointers?

Hi Reza, Thank you so much for the great video!! However, im not sure why when the 2nd approver responded, it doesnt reflect the name of both approver on the sharepoint list. When the first approval approves, it will reflect nicely onto sharepoint list. But when the 2nd approver approves, it becomes "Approved By: Approve" Please kindly advice. Thank you!!

Hey Reza, how do you determine whether using a list or document library? I want to set up dynamic approval workflows for construction submittals but am unsure where to start from a list/library perspective.

Hi Reza, Really Great tutorial. Thanks. is it possible to update item (approver comments, assigned to .etc ) without changing version of a document in Dynamic sequential document approval process in SharePoint library.

Amazing video Reza, I do have one question, I followed all your steps, however, the approvers are not able to open the pdf attachment, any tips for that?

I've watched this video soo many times now! Thank you for your awesome work. I have created an approval flow that is based on the teachings in this video. However, I have 2 differences. 1. I have multiple approvers and 2. While the approval is running, I would like to log, each approval response as they come in. I am not able to find a video that covers this scenario. Can you help?

Hi Reza , Amazing content as always. I am using your flow as a reference for my scenario however mine is different because i have 3 answers so i am using custom responses -wait for all responses , my issue and i have not figure it out , when the email is sent based on my condition which is set like yours i get the same answer for my response twice and send two e-mails if i have two approvers for example, can that be modified to get only one answer/one email?

Thanks for all of your videos. Request your help to resolve the issue: In case of dynamic approvers, my flow requires any one approval, but I want to notify the other approvers that the task is picked up and its in progress. Any directions, will be of great help.

Hi, Your videos are really good and are helping me quite a lot. However I'm facing an issue with the persons column. The sharepoint keeps ordering the names by ID rather than keep the order I enter the users. Have you come across this issue? Do you have sugestion/work around? thanks,

Hi, Rena! I have a question regarding the dynamic approves. How to get the approves emails from the Department approver list when a user picked multiple departments, especially more than five departments are selected ? The ‘Filter Query’ only has ‘Equal’ and ‘Start with’ foyers, it doesn’t have a ‘Contain’ filter. Thank you in advance!

This is awesome! Is it possible to have it so you can choose multiple departments under Category for approval?

Hi Reza your videos on power automate, power apps are really interesting and lot to learn from. At the moment I am wondering how can I fix “created by” which reflects in the approval flow notification. I do not require this field , requested by is sufficient. Even tough an event is created by someone else, still my name and email is pops. It looks weird.

Sir, I admire your work. I am stuck in one situation hope you will help me out. I am developing a Business Travel Application in SPO and need to pick users' approver data from the SharePoint list. I mean if a user fills the form it will be routed to his first line manager and then second.

👍👍👍🙏🙋‍♂️

Reza instead of sending all tasks to everyone at a time, how do we send a task to the first person in the approval and if he approves then the second and so as to the last in the approval column. Then I will update the outcome and decide if the workflow should continue or not.

Thanks so much Reza❤️ I'm requesting you to clear my doubts, I have 4 different approvals in single flow were all 4 has dynamic multiple approvars taken from SP. I have intialized variable and used append to array variable and joined it with ; . But here the challenge is flow runs for first time with out any issue and on second run, append to variable is taking different values. can you please assist me on this ?

Hi @Reza Dorrani , i have a question ?? when you select more than one department !! ( EXP : marketing + security ) , have we to change the flow ?