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I have a List Form which is filled by employee and on submitting it has to go through three levels of approvals. Approval section(Approver Name, Date, Approved/Rejected) for each of these members is in the list form.

When the employee submits the form mail should go to first approver and he has to take action (approved/rejected) and then mail should go to second approver and so on.

I thought of 2 ways of doing this and I am not sure which one would be better.(SharePoint 2013 Workflow)

1) Wait for the field change (trigger workflow on item create)

2) Set stages(Empcompleted, firstlevelcompleted and so on) and create workflow based on these stages (trigger workflow on item create and edit)

I am not sure if Wait action works fine or if I will face any problems in long run.

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  • I had similar task. What you didn't mention in your question is, What will happen if second or third approver rejects item? Will workflow be finished or will it loop and go to the beginning to the first approver?
    – Danilo
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 15:05
  • In my case, Workflow has to continue to the next step even if one of the approver is not approving it
    – MSiri28
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 16:10

3 Answers 3

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How will item be sent to the 2nd or 3rd approver if your WF is triggered only on item created :? It is unclear, but as I mentioned I've created similar WF and I made it with triggering WF on item create/edit. On create is for 1st approver and On edit is for the 2nd and 3rd ones.

You don't need wait option. What you need is enough columns to satisfy all possibilities/options and IF loops. Exp. extra columns Approver (1, 2, 3 (separately)) approved YES/NO. So If Approver 1 is empty send mail to 1st; If 2 and 3 are empty and 1st is not empty, send mail to 2nd; If 3rd is empty and 1st and 2nd are not empty send mail to 3rd.

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  • Thanks for the response. I did a similar workflow but instead set stages EmpSubmitted,Approver1Completed etc and triggered workflow on New and Create. Regarding "How will item be sent to the 2nd or 3rd approver if your WF is triggered only on item created :?" My plan was to trigger workflow on Item create if I use 'Wait for field change'.
    – MSiri28
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 19:22
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We do a lot of these. I've never liked the 'waiting for' in workflows - I know they 'dehydrate' and are stored in the DB, but I've never trusted workflows that stick around. We use a status field that has different options, like

    Ready for Approval
    Approval 1 Complete
    Approval 2 Complete
    Approval 3 Complete

but more complex. We have a change workflow that tests for the change in the status field (by checking another hidden field I add to the list), and if one of those status' is selected, it emails the next person, with instructions to 'Set xxxx Complete' status. It then changes my hidden field to the value of the Status field so the email won't go out again. Workflow done.

When the next approver changes the status, the next email goes out.

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SharePoint 3 level workflow Step by step https://youtu.be/xblIK7Ys5ig

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