Approval flow ignores Decision Table approvers and always assigns to the same manager

aikaterinik — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 17:12:25 GMT

I am building a custom app (Tuition Fee Exemption) and want to route approvals to different approvers depending on the values of University and Program (Request to). I have defined these rules in a Decision Table.

Setup:

A Record Producer creates a record in my custom table Tuition fee request.
Flow Designer (Trigger: Tuition fee request Created):
1. Ask For Approval (Secretary).
2. If approved → run Uni approval flow which uses the Decision Table Duplicate of university_approvals to determine the approver.
3. The Decision Table maps University + Program to the correct Approver (sys_user).

Problem:

Instead of sending the approval to the approver defined in the Decision Table, the approval is always sent to the same user (Abraham Lincoln).
The same approver (Abraham Lincoln) even shows up twice in the approval related list.
It looks like the flow is falling back to the Manager field of the user, rather than using the Decision Table output.

What I already tried:

Confirmed that the University and Request to values on the record exactly match the conditions in the Decision Table.
Verified the Decision Table is active and in the correct scope.
Checked that the flow is indeed referencing the correct Decision Table.
Despite this, the approver is always Abraham Lincoln.

Question:
How can I ensure that the Ask For Approval action actually uses the approver returned by the Decision Table, instead of defaulting to the user’s Manager?

Re: Approval flow ignores Decision Table approvers and always assigns to the same manager

miftikhar20 — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 11:11:50 GMT

Hi @aikaterinik ,

This happens because the Ask For Approval action isn’t using the Approver returned by the Decision Table. When no approver is set, the action defaults to the requester’s Manager field, which explains why it always routes to Abraham Lincoln and shows him twice.

To fix this:

In your Uni approval flow, make sure the Decision Table result (Approver) is available (e.g., DecisionTableResult.Approver).
Open the Ask For Approval action and set the Approvers field to the Decision Table output:

Data pill → Decision Table output → Approver
Confirm the Approver column in the Decision Table is a Reference field to sys_user.
(Optional) Add a Log action before the approval step to confirm the Decision Table is returning the correct user.

With this setup, the approver from the Decision Table will be used, and the flow will no longer fall back to the Manager field.

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

question Approval flow ignores Decision Table approvers and always assigns to the same manager in App Engine forum

Approval flow ignores Decision Table approvers and always assigns to the same manager

Re: Approval flow ignores Decision Table approvers and always assigns to the same manager