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SharePoint Approvals

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Posted on by AS-01061822-0

I have recently integrated Power Automate Approvals into my SharePoint sites to approve knowledge base material for my org.

I have noticed that I have a problem of duplicate review requests for the same document/page happening.
On my rigger, I have the @equals(triggerOutputs()?\['body/{ModerationStatus} condition on my trigger to only run on submissions.

What is happening now is users are submitting files for review multiple times before the original request was approved.
This then sends out multiple emails to the approvers. This then generates multiple approval emails that will error out after one of the approvals have been responded to.

I've though about possibly doing a custom flow to replace the default approval action but I don't even know where to begin with that.
Is there a way to add a "Review" option in the ModerationStatus property for deduplication?

Any help here would be appreciated.

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SpongYe 5,804 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @AS-01061822-0

I do not think you can solve this by adding a custom value like “Review” to the built-in SharePoint ModerationStatus field.

That field is SharePoint’s system-managed content approval status, and the expected states are things like Approved, Rejected/Denied, Pending, Draft, and Scheduled. It is not really intended to be extended with custom workflow states.

The better approach is to add your own deduplication/status column and have the flow check that before starting a new approval. For example, add a custom column to the library/page library:
ReviewFlowStatus Choice values: Not Started In Review Completed Rejected Errored

Then update your trigger condition so the flow only runs when the item is pending approval and it is not already in review.

@and( equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/{ModerationStatus}'], 'Pending'), not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/ReviewFlowStatus/Value'], 'In Review')) )

Then, as the first real action in the flow, update the item/page and set:

ReviewFlowStatus = In Review

At the end of the approval, set the custom status back to something like:

ReviewFlowStatus = Completed or ReviewFlowStatus = Rejected

This way, if a user submits the same file/page again while the first approval is still active, the trigger condition prevents another approval from being created. I would also recommend enabling Concurrency Control on the trigger and setting the degree of parallelism to 1. That helps avoid a race condition where two trigger runs start close together before either one has had time to set ReviewFlowStatus to In Review.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Have a great day! 😊

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SpongYe Power Platform Enthusiast [LinkedIn] | [Youtube| [My blog]

I love to share my knowledge and learn from others. If you find my posts helpful, please give them a thumbs up 👍 or mark them as a solution ✔️. You can also check out my blog [@S pongYe] for some cool solutions and insights. Feel free to connect with me on any of the platforms above. Cheers! 🍻

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AS-01061822-0 2 on at

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@SpongYe thank you for the insight! I think that is the appropriate course of action as well.

With the Concurrency control, how does that exactly work.
I am using this flow for approvals for publishing Knowledge Base articles in SharePoint. Thus multiple users will be submitting articles potentially at the same time.
Does the Concurrency control only apply to the resubmission of the same item in SharePoint or would it only allow the flow to run once and require the flow to end to start another flow?

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SpongYe 5,804 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@AS-01061822-0

Concurrency control on the trigger is not per SharePoint item. It applies to the entire flow.

So if you set trigger concurrency to: 1

Then only one instance of that flow can actively run at a time. If User A submits Article A and User B submits Article B at the same time, Article B’s flow run will wait until Article A’s run finishes. Microsoft describes trigger concurrency as the limit for how many runs a flow can have at the same time; with concurrency control on, the setting can be from 1 to 100.

For an approval flow, this can be a problem if the flow contains the “Start and wait for an approval” action, because that run may stay active for hours or days while waiting for an approver. With concurrency set to 1, that could block other unrelated KB article approvals from starting.

For this use case, I would not use trigger concurrency as the main deduplication mechanism. I would use a custom SharePoint column instead, such as ReviewFlowStatus, with values like Not Started, In Review, Completed, and Rejected.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Have a great day! 😊

-----------------------
SpongYe Power Platform Enthusiast [LinkedIn] | [Youtube| [My blog]

I love to share my knowledge and learn from others. If you find my posts helpful, please give them a thumbs up 👍 or mark them as a solution ✔️. You can also check out my blog [@S pongYe] for some cool solutions and insights. Feel free to connect with me on any of the platforms above. Cheers! 🍻

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