Approval Workflow - force restart on item change

Question

I got an up to 3-Level Approval Workflow which consists of several Steps/Stages for better readability and maintainability. It is set to start on creation and on change. After each Approval I'm referring to the first Stage of the workflow. This first Stage is used to calculate which approvals are needed. In it's transition-to-stage section, I then refer to the appropriate Stage/Approval. All of this works very very fine!

But if the user changes the Item, the workflow won't be restarted, because it's waiting for an approval. All the calculations are "skipped"/not executed and some Approvals might also.

I can cancel the workflow manually, change the item and it will execute properly.

But is there any automatic way/solution to force the workflow to restart on change even though it's waiting for an approval, which might be deprecated?

FYI: I'm on O365 and I'm using a SharePoint2013 Workflow

Answer 1

Per my test in my SharePoint online, it will not restart the workflow if I select the option “Start workflow automatically when an item is changed”. There is no OOB method to restart the workflow when an item is changed.

There is a workaround.

We can stop the all workflows in the list by PowerShell command firstly. Then when editing the item, the workflow will start automatically.

More references:

PowerShell: Terminate a workflow for all items in a list on SharePoint Online.

http://www.rapidcircle.com/powershell-terminate-a-workflow-for-all-items-in-a-list-on-sharepoint-online/

Cancelling The SharePoint Online Workflows Using CSOM.

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/blogs/cancelling-the-sharepoint-online-workflows-using-csom