Approver changing answer breaks the approval process

[ed475]

I have encountered the following scenario which breaks the change process leaving it stuck in assess/auth:

Approval rule: one approver from each group or any reject - created by 'ask for approval' flow action

• lets say we have 2 group approvals pending
• user_1 from group_1 approves the change - all other group_1 users approvals are set to 'no longer required'
• user_1 changes their approval to 'not yet requested' - done accidentally and not noticed.
• user_2 from group_2 approves the change
• all groups have now provided an approval response - the flow processes this
• because one response is neither an approval or rejection ('not yet requested') the ask for approval result is set to 'cancelled'
• As there is nothing to handle this the flow ends but the change does not transition states forward or backwards
• The change is now stuck in assess/authorize with approvals and flow completed - there is no way to 'unstick' this change record.

I can add a check to all the assess/auth flows to see if the 'ask for approval' result is neither approve or reject and take some action at this point.  However, it is a lot of work just to try to catch a very unlikely scenario so it doesn't feel like a great solution.

Considering this scenario - how should it be handled? What is the correct approach to ensure the change/flow cannot get into this state? Can you provide any other insight?

[ed475]

Thanks again for putting some time into looking into this with me. 

I've raised a ticket with SN to see what they say about it.

It's a really unlikely scenario to encounter but I have already seen it happen once. The user was entirely unaware of what they had done so reiterating a process led solution is unlikely to have any impact, though I agree in theory that is the best approach.

In the end I've decided to use a narrow condition BR to prevent transitions from 'approved' to 'not yet requested' or 'cancelled' on change requests. 

[ed475]

confirmed the original issue only occurs when 'not yet requested' or  'cancelled' are selected as the approval state after initially being set to approved.

[Itallo Brandão]

Hi @ed475 ,

I am glad to hear you decided to go with the Business Rule approach!

Given the limitations of the "Ask for Approval" action regarding state reversions (which you confirmed via testing), locking the transition at the data level (as I proposed in my first reply) is indeed the most robust fix. It solves the root cause by preventing the invalid data state from ever reaching the Flow.

Since you are implementing the solution I provided(BR), could you please mark my previous response as Accepted Solution?

This will help other community members find the correct workaround for this specific "Stuck Change" scenario.

Best regards,
Brandão.