Power Automate Approval Workflow: Single Approver (but multiple people permissioned to approve)

Question

I have a SharePoint list. A group of managers (5 people) have approval rights on the list. A larger group of contributors will submit new items to that list, and the Power Automate I have setup is a Single Approver workflow. Not all managers need to approve every item, only the contributor's direct manager needs to approve it. However, if one of the other managers goes to the SharePoint list and sees that there are 10 pending items (perhaps for his employee or perhaps not) and approves them all, then my flow will never finish because it wasn't approved by a direct manager.

I do not want to do a flow with multiple approvers (first to respond) because I do not want to send all of those emails to all managers in every case. Unless its possible to begin an approval process but not send an email? Haven't found anything to that effect.

How can I modify the standard Single Approver workflow to cancel the approval if one of the other managers has approved the item?

Answer 1

It is not supported to cancel an approval once it is initiate via a flow for the time being.

Here is a UserVoice post you can vote if that is something you need as well: Create a way to remove approval cards in pending send requests when the flow has been cancelled.

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In addition, there is a workaround introduced in this post to cancel the approval request by deleting the record in Common Data Service (CDS):

https://sharepains.com/2019/06/13/cancel-your-pending-approvals-in-microsoft-flow/

It is not an idea solution since it requires Premium Microsoft Flow Plan and messing with CDS directly might cause problem in production environment. But you can take a look if needed.