This is in continuation of the topic ‘Business Process Flows in Dynamics 365-Part I’

Now let’s see, how does Business Process Flows looks on CRM forms:

Colours have changed 🙂

I am in the second stage and have selected ‘Project type’ equals “Implementation”

I am in the second stage and have selected ‘Project type’ equals “Support”

Many a times, my clients have asked me about the ‘timer’; user must be able to see ‘How much time they have spent in current stage?’; No worries! here it is 🙂

You even get to see ‘Total time spent in this process’, cool that! 🙂

Icons have changed for next and previous stage button

Previous Stage     Next Stage

Just in case the process flow is irritating you, click on hide 

A new button for multiple actions on Business Process Flows is introduced, called ‘Process’

Click on that and you see, Switch Process, Edit Process & Abandon Process

We must be aware about Switch Process and Edit Process because of the availability in previous versions, if not:

Switch Process: it helps you to switch between multiple Business Process Flows, enabled for any entity at a given point of time. Basically, if you have multiple process flows which are not automated based on form type or any field and by mistake you started working on an irrelevant flow, you can switch process

Automating Switch Process Flows: (Refer this) https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/develop1/archive/2013/09/20/how-to-change-process-and-stage-programmatically

Edit Process: All users will not be able to see this option as this requires specific privileges, usually with System Admin. This feature helps you in modifying your Business process flow, right from the record level instead of going to>>settings>>processes; you can edit it from here

Abandon: Coolest of all J Abandon process will stop your process flows time, then and there. It even turns the process in to grey (deactivate) for this particular record. You can either switch to other process or reactivate this later.

Abandoned processes will be archived and can be reactivated, if required.

Hope you find this post useful!

Drop your questions & suggestions in the comment box below.

Thank you for reading!

Happy CRMing!!

Business Process Flows have been an integral part of Dynamics CRM since version 2013.

We should use Business Process Flows, if we want Users to follow same set of activities while executing a sales or service process (or may be a defined type of sales or service) while interacting with clients.

What’s new??

• Designer
• Trigger a workflow

Designer

Major UI Changes in the Business process flow designer. Much simpler, visio like experience and that’s why its lot easier for non-technical people to design and understand.

Finally, drag and drop is here in the process designer. It’s as quick as a MS Visio diagram; once you understand it J

You can drag & drop conditions, stages, steps and workflows

Take note of the points mentioned in the below URL, while designing:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn887193.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396#Points

You can connect a condition to a stage

You can take a screenshot by clicking on ‘snapshot’

You can cut, copy and paste; the steps, stages and conditions. how cool is that? J

A workflow can be triggered on entry or exit of any stage. The workflow must be on the entity, for which this stage is created.

Enough of blabbering, now let’s see how we can create a Business process flow, with all the above mentioned charms.

Scenario: We will create a flow for Sales Team; working on both Implementation and Support Projects. I am going to include 4 unique entities in my flow (max. limit is 5)

• 2 Stages on Lead
• 1 on Opportunity
• 1 on Quote
• 1 on Order

Go to settings>>Processes>>New

As you can see, it can also be run as a ‘Task flow’ for mobile clients. For more info, check this https://rajeevpentyala.com/2016/04/16/task-flow-crm-2016/

As soon as you hit ‘OK’, following screen will pop up:

On your right, you have drag & drop options:

As you can see in the screenshot below, there are four components-

Let’s start with adding stages, drag stage to the designer

Give it a name and click apply

Add steps to this stage, by clicking either on ‘details’ or ‘+Add’ button

On your right, you will see filed options to select from (make them required on your wish)

you can also define the sequence, from the Properties panel on the right

Add the second stage of Lead, I have custom field on Lead, ‘Project type’ having options; Implementation and support

It is mandatory to have your condition field on the stage from where you want conditions to evolve.

So now, I am going to add conditions (You can add Yes/No conditions as well); these are very similar to ‘Branch’ which we used to have in the previous versions of CRM

If ‘Project Type’ equals Implementation

If ‘Project Type’ equals Support

What I want to achieve here is, If ‘Project type’ is implementation, next stage must be DEMO otherwise, it should be TAILOR SUPPORT PLAN

Adding another stage now and merging the two opportunity stages to the next one

Click on stage ‘Test Support Plan’ and then click on connector

Click on ‘connect’ to see first and second point of this condition

Now click on 2^nd point, to establish a branch

Adding the last stage ‘Place Order’, my process flow looks like:

Workflows can be added at any stage entry or exit. Keep in mind that the workflow must be related to the stage entity and an on-demand workflow:

Hope you find this post useful!

Drop your questions & suggestions in the comment box below.

Thank you for reading!

Happy CRMing!!