Preserving Approval Date

I heard in an ENGAGE 2018 video on alerts is that you can set an alert to request approval based on the values of one of the cells in the row. You can choose a column with drop-down properties to indicate that the alert was Submitted, Declined or Approved.

Someone at the session asked if there is a way to know the date of approval, and the speaker said you can refer to the Modified date to list the date and timestamp of the last data change made to the row. (In his example, he created an action to lock the row once the approval request was submitted, so the modified date would reflect a change to the column with Submitted, Declined or Approved.

He then said you could capture that date with a formula to keep the date---in the case if an approval is declined, and the row is unlocked so the person working on the task can make changes before submitting the request for approval again.

How would you "capture" the modified date of the original Declined? If you know the modified date (when the cell was change from Submitted to Declined, or even if we made a change to the row even after Approved), any change in the row would changed the Modified Date, right? So, then we no longer have the date of the original Approved or Declined.

Even if I created a new column that captured that Modified Date from the other column, it would be updated as well once the Modified Date was changed (since its a formula, not an actual date).

Any idea how to capture the date a request was Submitted for approval and the dates the Approval or Declined was received?

Thanks!

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