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

[Daniel Draes]

Hi Soren,

sorry, didn't see your reply somehow. Hm, that is a bit weird. Which approval field are you using in the two approval steps and which one is the one triggering your SLA?

Daniel

[s_renjarnbo]

Hi Daniel

As you can see from below I have even tried emptying the "approval field" in the first approval, see below:

Even in above flow the approval field in the RITM gets updated briefly to "Approved" (which then triggers the SLA) and then updated back to "Requested" again because the 2nd approval kicks in (and because of this the SLA is paused)

I simply have a problem understanding what I am doing wrong here..... If I cannot get this to work soon I have to revert to the old workflow engine because I know that works... but that is a step in the wrong direction I believe

[Daniel Draes]

Well, emptying the field will not help. I would expect the action to 'fall back' to the default field. You will need a separate approval field which you can use in this part of the flow.

So my approach would be to create a new field on the record and call it something like manager_approval. Use that in the fist approval step. This should then not trigger your SLA.

In the second approval (Group Approval) you can then use the regular approval field.

[s_renjarnbo]

Hi Daniel

I have already tried adding a new field and use that in the approval flow - still does not work.

[s_renjarnbo]

Hi Daniel

I have already tried adding a new field and use that in the approval flow - still does not work.