Introduction
Usually Power Automate provides a way for us to “start and wait for an approval” which would assign an approval task to a user. But this action lacks an option to auto trigger approval for another user if the first user is unable to take action on the approval. In my example, I have to auto trigger approval to the next user if the first user does not mark his approval/rejection in 1 hour. Below is the step by step way to auto trigger approval to another user based on time interval.
Open Power Automate and create a new Flow
NOTE
In case you already have a Power Automate created, you can ignore this step.
Step 1
Browse to
here and provide your Office 365 account details to login.
Step 2
Select either a “Template” to start your Flow or you can search for the template. For my example I am selecting “Templates” from the left navigation highlighted with yellow in the below image and then selecting Power Apps button, as trigger point for my Flow is a button click from Power Apps. You can select the template based on your requirements.
Step 3
Empty Flow would be opened.
Power Automate to Auto trigger approval based on time interval.
Step 1
Name your Flow with the appropriate meaning. Add a new Step “Start and wait for an Approval”. Then go to the “Settings” of the action, as shown in the below screen shot.
Step 2
Now we will set the “Timeout” to “PT60M” as it represents 1 hour in ISO 8601 format. Now we will wait for user approval for 1 hour as per my requirement. You can change it as per your requirement.
Step 3
Now add another action, “Create an approval”. Click on “Configure run after” for this action
Step 4
Here we will select the “has timed out” option as we need to run this approval process after the first user approval gets timed out. In other words, if the first approver didn’t take action within 1 hour this action will time out and auto trigger another approval process.
Step 5
Save your Flow and test the flow. We should see the second approval process start if the first user does not take any action on the approval.
That is it. I hope you have learned something new from this article and will utilize this in your work.