How to get SharePoint 2013 task (Who approved?)

Question

I have created Visual Studio workflow in SharePoint 2013 on Workflow Manager 1.0. I have added composite task which is sending 3 people task parallel, completion criteria is "Wait for first response". So basically whoever response first, task will be completed and others will cancel email

It is sending default email Something like One of your tasks was canceled and deleted. You do not need to take any further action on that task.

This doesn't make any sense. So I just wanted to send an email that task was approved or rejected by xyz user.

Now I was looking for how can I get outcome of the task with who completed task

Answer 1

The cancellation email is hard to suppress. I was searching for the same but was only able to find a workaround that kills your designer view: http://parlaesolutions.com/blogs/Waive-Emails-for-SharePoint-2013-Workflows-in-Visual-Studio-2013-Designer. You do have the option to change the cancellation email body and subject. You can try to see whether the outcome property is populated when cancellation email is send and use it in the email body.

Wouldn't be better to not expand the composite task which should result in one task instead of multiple (Or even use a single task assigned to a group?). You are basically doing the same by setting it to parallel and stop on first response. This way you are able to catch when the task completes and send a notification to all users with the outcome and the person that completed the task (task last modified property).

Answer 2

The task outcome is returned by default, variable "Outcome ". To find out who approved the document is a bit of a sticky solution. You can have the user save the document and then perform the approval/ rejection. Then, perform a lookup on the said document for last modified by and that will represent the person who approved/rejected.