Flow designer sequential approvals

[Jonathan63]

I am trying to create sequential approvals using the flow designer so that I can have multiple levels of approval on a single catalogue item.

In the legacy workflow, I can create multiple approval steps without impacting the parent RITM record, and I can then set the approve or reject value based on the outcome of those actions.

With the flow designer, when the first approval is approved, the flow sets the approval field on the RITM to "Approved", then changes it back to "Requested" when the next approval in the sequence is generated. I have tried removing the "Approval field" from the action config but this hasn't made any difference. This is of course unacceptable behaviour because we will have multiple updates for approved and requested on the RITM...the RITM approval field should only update once all approvals in the sequence have been approved or rejected.

How can we achieve this behaviour with flow designer?

I have seen this forum post which about the same issue but the solutions in the replies are unfortunately not working:
https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=00d918b1db63941011762183ca96199c

Cheers

[s_renjarnbo]

Thanks @Dave_H What about the first "Ask for approval" ?

[Dave_H]

Sorry, this is the approval. As you can see, I only set the reject rule. It will still trigger the approval request to this user and if they approve, the output is 'cancelled'.

[jmiskey]

Wow, so much for making Flow Designer "easier" than the old Workflow tool, ServiceNow!

Thanks for the reply.  At least you found a way to do it!

[Dave_H]

You are not wrong. In my workplace we are trying to transition from Workflows onto Flows and some simple things are now so much harder. The biggest issue I have with Flow designer is you can't wait for a condition on a catalog variable. Its something we use all the time in workflows but now its not possible. I also don't know why they don't allow a simple run script action instead of forcing us to build resuable actions.

The problem with the approvals is that ServiceNow tries to bundle everything into the 'Ask for Approval' action. If they simply got it to trigger the approval request and allowed us to define the output conditions, it would be a lot better. Instead they force us to use very rigid 'Approved' or 'Rejected' rules instead of letting us use the 'Approval state' data pill to choose what happens next.

[WazzaJC]

@Dave_H  this is an excellent article thanks ever so much, really appreciated.

Dave - quick question - can you share the screenshot showing the Fields and Conditions for where once All Approvals are done (approved), we then have to manually set Update Requested Item Record to Closed Complete - I assume this is the correct approach?

My only question/concern - but after the approvals there are still Catalog Tasks to trigger off the RITM and only then the RITM would complete. If we are manually Updating the Record to State = Closed Complete after the Approvals steps, should we not do that only after the Catalog Tasks have been triggered and fulfilled?

I'd appreciate your advice on this, thank you Dave.