Currently when we talk about workflows, dialogs, business process flows, and portable business logic in Dynamics CRM, you can create each of these using different interfaces and design. When you want to create a workflow or a dialog (synchronous or background process), you navigate to ‘Settings->Processes->New.’ If you want to create a Business Process Flow (BPF) (the stage process on an entity form), you can navigate to ‘Settings->Processes->New.’ You can also create Portable Business Logic (PBL) either from a form in edit mode or from your solution by expanding your entity and finding the section to create PBLs.
Interface to create a new workflow:
Interface to create a new BPF:
Interface to create a new PBL:
Based on the above interfaces, you can see that the BPF and PBL (Business Rules) interface are similar, whereas the Workflow Interface has more powerful features unique to its requirement. As for the future based on the CRM roadmap, we can see some convergence in the above interfaces, and it looks like the following for BPF and Business Rules:
With the new designer, there comes new and updated features such as a new drag and drop designer for BPF and new features like Task Flows and Business Recommendations. The new designer enhances the BPF such that the system can make recommendation actions to the User based on the logic. It can then execute workflow actions based on the stage process events within the process flow. The processes created using the new designer can be restricted based on security roles and can be reported on in charts and external applications like Power BI.
Other features like this along with enhancements are to be released with the introduction of Dynamics 365. You can keep up with the roadmap and all of its exciting features here: http://crmroadmap.dynamics.com/
[avatar user=”dvora” size=”thumbnail” align=”left” /]DAVE VORA | Senior Business Software Consultant/ CRM Lead
Dave is responsible for leading KTL’s CRM consultants, assuring that our solution scoping, architecting and delivery meet and exceed customer expectations. Dave has built lasting relationships with clients by understanding their business needs and providing value by leveraging their existing resources. Along with his consulting team, he has delivered effective solutions beyond traditional CRM constraints. Dave has more than eight years of experience in implementing business software for a variety of industries, including service, government, distribution, not-for-profit and manufacturing. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science and also a specialization in Management from University of California at Irvine. His experience includes helping companies embrace technology to fulfill their organizational needs and creating innovative solutions using CRM, GP, Scribe and other Microsoft products.
