question Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option? in Developer forum

Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

markcorl — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 05:39:46 GMT

Hey gang!

TL;DR - Flow Designer does not appear to have functionality to accept a single approver from each group. It's either every approver from every group or a single approver from any group.

Customer requirements are typically satisfied by a single approval from each group when it comes to group approvals in a workflow. If they have four approval groups, it's typically not desirable for only a single approval to come from a single group. A single rejection from any group is a different story, but at least one approval from each group is the most common requirement I see. Now, everybody's favorite classic workflow editor had no problem dealing with this requirement and has a couple options. One was 'An approval from each group' and 'First response from each group'.

Flow Designer appears to be devoid of such options. In the lone 'Ask for Approval' action, there is indeed a setting to determine "when" to Approve. Let's take a look at those options:

Anyone approves = A single approval from any number of approvers is all that is needed to satisfy this approval.
All users approve = Every single standalone approver and group member needs to approve to satisfy this approval.
% of users approve = A provided percentage of user approvals is needed to satisfy this approval.
# of user approve = A provided number of user approvals is needed to satisfy this approval.

Clearly, none of the above options allow a single user from each group to approve and satisfy the approval.

The one option I did NOT mention above is All responded and anyone approves. This would appear to be the closest choice for what I'm looking for and tends to make one believe it satisfies the approval by translating to 'At least one person from each group needs to respond and approve before we're good'. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

In the screenshot below, you can see my configuration.

I am pulling in multiple users from a table and requiring ALL of them to approve, which works fine.
I am requiring ALL manual approvers to approve, which works fine.
I am pulling in multiple groups (that contain 2 or more users each) and asking for a response from all groups with anyone approving, which does NOT work. It waits for all the other approvals, including every group member to approve before considering the Approval action 'approved'.

I would expect this to set the remaining group members to No Longer Required after the 1st approval for that group was submitted. That doesn't happen.
That does happen when I set it to Anyone approves. Then once a member from ANY group approves, it sets ALL groups to approved and ALL other members from ALL groups to No Longer Required.

I was considering opening a support ticket for this, but was hesitant since there doesn't appear to be another person in the entire ServiceNow ecosystem who has asked this question (or at least none I could find). Typically when I can't find anyone else having my issue, it means I'm overlooking something or unaware of some type of functionality. I find it hard to believe no one else has seen this and that I'm the first person to ask, but I guess it's possible. It's also possible this is a bug in Flow Designer and I will need to submit a support ticket.

Regardless, I apologize for the verbose post and look forward to your feedback!!

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Maik Skoddow — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 07:11:19 GMT

Hi @mcorl

what about that configuration:

Kind regards
Maik

If my answer replied your question please mark appropriate response as correct so that the question will appear as resolved for other users who may have a similar question in the future.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

markcorl — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 07:30:42 GMT

Hi Maik and thank you for the idea. Unfortunately, the dynamic number of approval groups getting pulled in from a glide_list can range from none to ???. Since all the groups will land on one conditional line, this would not work for my situation. It would essentially work the same way as the 'Anyone approves' since it also accepts a single approval as being good for all groups.

However, your idea is a fantastic workaround for anyone else with a flow dedicated to a single item and a defined list of approval groups!!

An even better idea would be to have a baseline option 'First approval from each group' LOL

Thanks again.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Maik Skoddow — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 12:52:25 GMT

Hi @mcorl

Another idea:

Create a simple Workflow with one Group Approval Activity and call that Workflow from Flow

Kind regards
Maik

If my answer replied your question please mark appropriate response as correct so that the question will appear as resolved for other users who may have a similar question in the future.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

markcorl — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 14:40:34 GMT

Good Morning Maik,

So I considered your 2nd suggestion and am sorry to say I don't believe this will work either, for a couple reasons.

The primary reason it won't work is because I'm getting the group approvals from a glide_list value and not querying a table.
1. I'd have to query the approval groups from a table and then flush the results through a "For Each" loop, so that each approval would individually call the approval subflow for processing.
Even if I got fancy and did an array, breaking down the glide_list contents, issue 2 prevents this from working the way I'd like.
I stand corrected on my 1st couple statements. You can perform a "For Each" loop on a glide_list value, but the issue below still prevents this from working how I'd like.
The 2nd issue is that I want all these group approvals to go out the same time as the other approvals that follow the manager approval.
1. Calling a subflow for each group would wait for an approval or rejection before returning to the main flow to grab the next group approval.
2. Issue 1 blocks issue 2

I do appreciate your time and ideas, which may solve issues for other folks on this forum. Unfortunately, they don't resolve the issues I'm having. Keep the ideas coming though if you think of anything else. Just because it may not solve my issues doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

Thank you.
-Mark

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Michael Leone — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 04:31:33 GMT

I'm facing the same issue as well.

I have a form with a Multi Row Variable set that allows users to select multiple areas they require access to.

I then use flow designer to loop through and lookup the area they require access to and shoot an approval to the area owner (using a sub flow).

This works great but if the user selects 2 areas it sets the second approval to no longer required.

Anyone know if ServiceNow are going to fix this as it works perfectly in Workflow editor.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

brycefraser — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 09:21:38 GMT

Could you not feed the list of groups into a single instance of the sub-workflow rather than a workflow instance per group?

Did you ever end up resolving this?

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

markcorl — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:58:55 GMT

Howdy gang!

**Update

This still does not work in Flow Designer the way it does in Workflow Editor. I even tried to create a legacy subflow to handle the group approvals to run in parallel with the other approvals and that didn't work either. So my solution was to handle ALL the approvals in a good old fashioned Approval Coordinator. Everything works as expected now and I just wait for the coordinator to return a result and process that result back in Flow Designer.

Seems like such a common thing. I'm mystified why Flow Designer can't handle the first approval from each dynamic group declared in an array. Maybe in San Diego or Tokyo...

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Satish16 — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 18:12:54 GMT

Hi Mcorl,

Agree with you very common thing on the Group approval is missing.

Had a similar requirement, and I think was able to overcome this issue by looping group approvals as screen shot attached.

Disadvantage: Not all group approvals get triggered at the same time, it has to go one by one though.

Note: The attached workflow is just work-in-progress, still some testing is pending. But thought will share my experience, hope this helps?

Cheers

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Luk__ Kn__ek — Fri, 27 May 2022 07:06:40 GMT

For multiple groups approval, you can use multiple "Anyone approves" in an OR condition. Connected to one "Anyone rejects" containing all groups needed.

For dynamic group approvals, check runtime value of flow context of the above and script the approval condition to return a string like:

ApprovesAnyG[groupSysID1]&AnyG[groupSysID2]&AnyG[groupSysID3]OrRejectsAnyG[groupSysID3]

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

nyancer3 — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 15:31:33 GMT

Hi @markcorl ,

You should be able to accomplish this by using a script in the "Rules" as follows.

Start the approval string with "Approves"
For each group you need to get approval from, append the following:
1. If this is NOT the first group in the list, "&"
2. "AnyG[" + sys_id of the group + "]"
If you want a rejection from anyone to reject, then add "OrRejectsAnyG[" + comma-separated list of the group sys_ids + "]"

The end result should look like this:
ApprovesAnyG[sys_id_1]&AnyG[sys_id_2]...&AnyG[sys_id_n]OrRejectsAnyG[sys_id_1,sys_id_2,...sys_id_n]

Hope that helps!

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Michael Leone — Mon, 15 May 2023 14:26:19 GMT

I just noticed this in my subscribed threads and wanted to touch base.

I logged this as a I ticket last year and was advised that this was a know error that would be fixed in Utah. They let me know that it was due to the way the approval engine was written and it wasn't going to be back ported.

I'm going to test this out tomorrow and report back.

I ended up skating around. The approval by braking my item up into a parent item with multiple child items for each item that required a separate approval. I found this to be a better solution as the approval record has more meaningful data.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Jose Manuel — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:15:41 GMT

Good morning @markcorl ,

I found a way to achieve the "First response from each group" condition.

The action configuration:

You need to specify rules by script.

Script:

return "Approves1#G[groupid]&1#G[groupid]";

If you would like it dynamic, you can get your groups' ids before and concatenate them.

An example:

In this case, my groups were saved in a glide_list field.

Results:

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

svani — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 07:00:11 GMT

Hi Jose Manuel,

It really works for approval, how can we achieve it for rejection like anyone rejects irrespective of group , the request should reject as per the above example its the same way for rejection as well, each member in group has to reject it but we need only one rejection, please let me know if you have implimented this.

thanks in advance

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Jose Manuel — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 17:46:16 GMT

It's kind the same. we only need to change the sintaxys. here is an example:

Rejects1#G[sys_id_group_1]&1#G[sys_id_group_2]

In this case, you only need to change the word "Approves" by "Rejects".

Let me know if this worked.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

El Cuchi — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 05:00:26 GMT

Hi Maik,

i trust this msg finds you well. I wonder if you could help me here.

I have a catalogue item where users select in a list collector one or more business applications.

As part of the flow, the RITM must be approved by a fixed group and the portfolio manager group for each business application selected. One person for each group must approve and any rejection will cancel the request.

Since i am new to flow i created an action "Ask for approval" containing the following script.

var answer = [];

var approvers = 'a7923e8edbe429103985be43f3961941';

//search for managed by group of business applications

var app = fd_data.trigger.request_item.variables.business_applications_affected.toString();

//search for application managed by group

var gr = new GlideRecord('cmdb_ci_business_app');

gr.addQuery('sys_id','IN', app);

gr.query();

while(gr.next()){

if(gr.managed_by_group!=''){

approvers=approvers+','+gr.managed_by_group;

} else {

if(gr.managed_by_group=='') {

approvers=approvers+','+gr.application_manager;

}

//}

return "ApprovesAnyG["+approvers+"]OrRejectsAnyU["+approvers+]";

The script above adds all approvers and group approvals but if a member of a group approves the other members of the same group are not set to "no longer required". Also, if a person rejects the request, none of the other approvers are set to "no longer required".

would u know why or how should i do this?

regards,

Max

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Kieran Jones1 — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 09:45:19 GMT

After spending hours going over the forums, I found your reply here and tried it but it still didn't work in my instance.

But, I then stumbled upon this article: https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1561381

Once I set the system property 'com.glide.hub.flow.approval.function.early_terminate' to true, the issue is completely resolved and it works.

I'm curious to know if you have this property set to true in your instance.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Owen — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 10:41:06 GMT

I too have just spent hours looking over the forums and trawling through the debugger to see if I could work out why Flow Designer group approvals didn't behave like Workflow group approvals, as we've recently started using Flows for some approvals.

I would have never found that KB, so thanks for posting this.

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

georgematau — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 16:09:41 GMT

This can be done using FlowDesigner approval rules in both drag-and-drop and scripted format

Drag and drop should look something like this. The two groups have to be added separately with AND between them translating to 'Anyone from each group'. If the groups are added instead in the same box, then this would translate to ''Anyone from all groups'.

Using scripted approvals the code should be like this

AnyG['group1_sysid']&AnyG['group2_sysid']

In older instances I found out that this doesn't work until I set the system property 'com.glide.hub.flow.approval.function.early_terminate' to false, as suggested by this article from NowSupport https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1504056

Re: Group Approvals in Flow Designer missing 'an approval from each group' option?

Jose Manuel — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 19:45:06 GMT

I didn't review it in the moment, but right now, in my yokomaha's instance, I don't have that property and it works. maybe it was solved.

Great to hear you could solve it !