From the Microsoft Power Automate blogs: Parallel tasks; Flow runs; Entity extraction; Multilevel approvals

In this week’s Microsoft Power Automate blog roundup:

• Three ways to handle many parallel tasks
• New feature: cancel all flow runs for a version of a flow
• Streamlined text and document categorization with entity extraction
• The hidden multilevel approval feature

Three ways to handle many parallel tasks in Power Automate

Writing on the Let's Power Automate blog, Tom Riha answered the question: “I’ve got an approval process with 10+ parallel approval tasks, what's the best way to implement it in Power Automate?"

Riha wrote that most approval processes assign the tasks in a sequence: the first user/group of users complete their task, followed by the second user, third, and so on. 

However, he noted that sometimes you encounter a process that’s more time sensitive. He explained that in this situation you need to implement parallel tasks.

Riha described three approaches. He wrote that one approach is to add a lot of parallel branches – one for every approval task. Add all the actions and configure them, one by one.

However, Riha noted that a better approach, related to the use of configuration lists, is using a parallel loop for the tasks, and the third approach is using child flows. In his blog post, Riha provided information on how to use each approach.

Power Automate new feature: cancel all flow runs for a version of a flow

Writing on his blog, Parag Chapre noted that Power Automate is known for its ability to streamline and automate workflows. But as the volume of flows increases and they become increasingly complex, it can be challenging to manage them.