How to Collect Concurrent Approvals from Multiple Approvers in Smartsheet?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Approval Workflow to Multiple Persons.

ellie111

Hi, I am also trying to find a way to send one approval concurrently to multiple approvers and collect all of their responses. Right now, I have a separate sheet that I am copying all responses to, counting the responses that match the name of the project, and when that count is greater than or equal to the count of approval contacts in the cell, I am marking a check box that all Approvals are received.

The issue I have run into is only the first person to view the approval can click approve or deny, everyone else it just says "Save". Did we ever discover a way for multiple people to approve the same request in a linear way? Or any other solution would also be appreciated. Also, if one person declines, we have to start all over again with approvals so documenting those is less important than just making sure everyone responded

Michelle Choate 2

Hi @ellie111. So there is currently no way for multiple contacts in a cell to provide a singular approval in a cell. What you need is a column per approver. Even if the approver count changes, you can set up separate automations to run concurrently if and only if the "Approver" column is not blank. That way it only runs on the columns that have names in them.

Then you can create an automation that also clears the cells if any of them show "Declined" and restart the process.

Then you can have a final column that is a checkbox that says "All Approvals Received" and have an if statement, if the count of the columns that have approvers in them that are not blank, match the number of the words "Approved", then it can check a box.

If you want to walk through this sometime, give me a message via email and I would be happy to walk you through it.