How to handle “Referred Back” in Flow Designer and resend approval after resubmission (Catalog RITM)

Nitish2185
Tera Contributor

17 hours ago

Hi all,

I am working on a flow in Flow Designer for a Service Catalog item. The flow has an approval step, and it works fine for Approved and Rejected states. However, I am facing issues with the Referred Back state.

Here’s what I need to achieve:

  1. When a catalog request (RITM) goes for approval:

    (i).If Approved, the flow should continue.(ii).If Rejected, the flow should stop.(iii).If Referred Back, an email notification should be sent to the requester so they can update and resubmit the request.

  2. After the resubmission, the RITM should go through another round of approval (essentially re-trigger the approval process).

The issue I am running into is that the Ask For Approval action in Flow Designer does not seem to handle Referred Back properly. I tried customizing the rules, but the flow only reacts to Approved/Rejected by default, and the Referred Back scenario causes the flow to remain waiting or produce errors.

Any guidance, examples, or best practices would be really helpful.

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M Iftikhar
Kilo Sage

11 hours ago

Hi @Nitish2185, 

 

Here is the most effective approach you can try for your scenario:

  1. Use a "Do the following until" Loop: Enclose your approval process within this loop. The loop should continue until a flow variable (e.g., approval_status) is set to either "Approved" or "Rejected".

  2. Place "Ask for Approval" Inside the Loop: This ensures that the approval is re-triggered every time the loop runs.

  3. Use an "If" Logic Block to Check the State: After the approval action, check the result.

    • If Approved: Set your flow variable to "Approved". The loop will terminate, and the flow can proceed.

    • If Rejected: Set your flow variable to "Rejected". The loop will terminate, and you can end the flow.

    • If Referred Back (the "Else" condition): This is where you build the custom logic.

      • Send Notification: Add an action to send an email to the requester.

      • Wait for Update: Use the Wait for condition on record action. Set it to pause the flow until the RITM record is updated by the user.

This design pattern ensures that when the request is referred back, the flow notifies the user, waits for their changes, and then the loop automatically re-runs the "Ask for Approval" action, effectively resubmitting it to the approvers.

 

If you need further help in implementing these steps, let me know I'd happy to help!

 

Thanks & Regards,
Muhammad Iftikhar
If my response helped, please mark it as the accepted solution so others can benefit as well.

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