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Tanya Denton's avatar
Tanya Denton
Iron Contributor
Jan 16, 2018

Approval Flow - Approval Status - why can't this be updated?

I am hoping i am missing something! Just looking at moving approval workflows from SharePoint workflows to Microsoft Flow. From what i have read the flow cannot update the standard 'Approval Status'...
Microsoft Flow
jdiorio's avatar
jdiorio
Copper Contributor
Nov 28, 2018

Hi there Tanya Denton...can you provide in some detail how you got this to work?  I've been pulling my hair out trying to get the Approval Status flag to change depending on the response sent out from the Flow approval e-mail, and I can't seem to get it to work.  I am using the 'Set content approval status' that Michal Golan mentioned, but it doesn't seem to work.

 

What am I doing wrong?!?! :) 

racrig's avatar
racrig
Brass Contributor
Mar 05, 2020

Hello everyon ~ jdiorio 

 

I'm still struggling to get Flow to work with the OOTB SharePoint content approval functionality. I have a Flow now the does include the (not-at-all-obvious) Get File Metadata action so that I can get the right Etag and reference it in the Set Content Approval action. However, the action just does not work. Here is the explanation I posted on the Flow community board:

 

I have a Flow running on a SPO list with content approval enabled. There is no approval task -- only the action to Set Content Approval. My flow has to update some metadata, which of course sets the Approval Status to Draft. I thought I could use the Set Content Approval action in Flow to force the status back to Approved. (I do have the Get File Metadata action in place immediately beforehand and the Etag is set.) But I get this error:

 

{
"error": {
"code": 502,
"source": "flow-apim-msmanaged-na-westus2-01.azure-apim.net",
"clientRequestId": "ae99f1e8-a0e1-4b37-8f4a-6207da707c04",
"message": "BadGateway",
"innerError": {
"status": 500,
"message": "The current state of the item is Draft and the following action Approve cannot be implemented\"\r\nclientRequestId: ae99f1e8-a0e1-4b37-8f4a-6207da707c04\r\nserviceRequestId: ae99f1e8-a0e1-4b37-8f4a-6207da707c04"
}
}
}
 
So the flow updates my file properties, but then will not set the Approval Status because it's in Draft?? Even back in SP Designer, I could force the Approval Status back to where I needed it to be. Does anyone know how to make this work? 
 
(Please note, the Flow was running fine before the Set Content Approval action was added. No bad gateways prior to that change.)
*************************************
This is all super frustrating because we SharePoint people have spent YEARS trying to get business users to embrace the control and automation of Content Approval. Now O365 comes out and it's so great...BUT....it does not work with this key, basic, bedrock, foundational feature of SharePoint. How can we do content management in the main Microsoft content management platform if these things are unworkable?  
 
If anyone has a clue, please reply. Thank you all.

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