Business Process Flow 2013/2015

CRM 2013 BPF

Business process Flows are a new enhancement to dynamics CRM 2013, and they bring the power of guided business rules to the application.

Unlike workflow processes, BPFs are designed to work with users and guide them through a variety of business processes.

Key Benefits CRM 2013 BPF

1.       BPF allow organization to define the specific steps that need to be taken for something to happen. BPF allow org. to track where in the process the record is.

2.       BPF allow for “stage-gating”, which requires data to be entered before proceedings to the next step. BPF are visually represented on the record.

3.       BPF can be controlled through portable business logic and workflow. An example of this is when a field is hidden via a PBL or a value is populated via a workflow, the BPF incorporates this changes as well.

4.       BPF allow for multiple entities in the BPF(up to five)

5.       There can be 10 active BPF per entity

6.       Users with appropriate security permissions can edit the BPF in the real time to incorporate new rules.

7.       Users can switch BPF midstream to new BPF if the situation changes. A common example of this is when an inbound call creates a case with a Case to RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) process, but it turns out the user just has a question; in this case, the user might change the BPF to Case to KB.

Limitations of BPF

1.       An entity once selected during design of the BPF cannot be reference again (except to close the record), and no more than 5 entities can be referenced.

2.       If a user’s security permission does not allow using a BPF, the BPF will be visible but a maximum of 10 BPF per entity can be active. (You can have more, but only 10 can be active.)

3.       There is a maximum of 30 stages per BPF

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 comes with at least three BPF but they are designed to be illustrative and allow for an understanding of how BPF work (althrough in our experience we have found them to be practical).

The 3 BPF are as follows:

1.       Led to opportunity sales process

2.       Opportunity sales process

3.       Phone to Case process

Ready to use BPF

Microsoft has included a package of 12 other BPF in the system, but they need to be deployed.

To deploy them, navigate to setting, Data Management and Select Add Ready-to-Use Business Processes.

Enable an entity for BPF

You can enable the BPF features for an entity by allowing this on the form customization. To do so go to Customization>Customize the system and then select an entity for which you want to enable business process.

Once it is enable, you cannot reverse it. It create two new fileds for the entity named processeId(process) and staged(process stage).

ProcessID is used to hold the ID of the process associated with the current record, and similarly holds the ID of the current stage of the record in the process

Business Rule in CRM 2015
one of the new exciting features for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 is portable business logic, also known as business rules.

In the past, to customize a form and display an error message or show and hide a field, you had to learn and implement some JavaScript to make work. With PBL, you can do it with any javascript.

The following action are available with PBL:(Action to
1. Show error message.
2. Set field value.
3. Set business required.
4. Set visibility.
5. Lack or Unlock field.

CRM 2015 Improvements:
1. Support for enriched business logic including if/else.
2. Combining expressions usings and / or conditional rules.
3. Using Rule to set default field values
4. Synchronous server side Business Rule logic execution.
5. Visual editing.

Server Side Business Logic Execution.

Another improvement to dynamics CRM Business Rules is server side execution that enables a synchronous workflow to be executed.

As well as being a real time operation this offers greater control by defining the scope that will be set to the entity.

This also ensure your rule will fire no matter how CRM records are updated, even if fields are automatically updated via integrated solutions.