In this Approval series we will send reminder for Approval flow. We know how to created a simple approval flow?. but what happened if you are waiting for a long time for your request to be approved.
As i have already mentioned in my part 1 of this series, by default Reminder can not be configured in Approval action. Here we will create reminder for approval flow.
So, we have created a SharePoint list called Leave Management. when employee submits a leave request, then approver(manager) gets a request via Outlook mail/Microsoft Teams notification. If the manager approves (accept/reject) the request, then the requestor gets the response mail in Outlook and the request gets updated with the current status.
Sometimes, employee waits for a long time for approval, in that case, we will send the reminder mail to the approver. Once manager approves the request, the remainder gets stopped, the requestor gets the response mail and leave request gets updated.
Steps for setting reminder in approval flow-
- I hope you have already design your simple approval flow if not please visit here for designing simple approval flow. So this is my simple approval flow-
- For reminders, first you need to send approval to your manager. To do so you will add create an approval action as shown above.
- In the next step, we will create a variable- VarApprovalCheck. Then set the type to boolean and value to false.
- Now you need to add one parallel action-Do until after Create an approval action. To do so hover your mouse on the line between Create an approval & wait for an approval then click on + sign. it will display two links. you need to click on “Add a parallel branch” as shown below-
- Now add a Do until loop and configure as shown below-
Do until explanation:
Condition: Must be false for continuous looping. Once condition becomes true loop will break.
Count: number of times your loop will run.
Timeout: maximum time for looping.
Delay: must for counting and Timeout. Otherwise your do until loop executed immediately.
- After wait for an approval, you need to set variable- VarApprovalCheck value as true. Once manager approve/reject leave request, set variable set VarApprovalCheck value as true and this will be check by Do until condition.
- After delay you need to add one condition that will check variable-VarApprovalCheck value is equal to false. If condition is true then send reminder email to manager otherwise skip the loop.
- In condition checking variable value- you need to compose respond link otherwise it will be a plain text and then use it in your send email action.
- Most important point: Please add terminate action after condition-Check approval outcome so that flow must stop immediately rather than sending one extra reminder despite manager approval. in case of multi-level approval, this step must be added in last.
Complete Flow-
