I was asked to
participate in the CRMUG 4x4 webinar series. These are quick webinars with
multiple speakers sharing tips and answering questions. I also wanted to
document my tips here for future reference.
Workflows are a
great way to quickly and easily provide automation to help your users and your
business process. It is very important to understand how they work so you can
use them effectively. Here are my tips for working with workflows.
Map Out the Process
With any type of
process it is important to map out exactly what you want to happen. Start with
your requirements and then use a visual tool like Visio (or a white board) to
draw out the steps. This is important so you can find logic errors or any
pieces that may need additional thought. Ask yourself questions like:
- What conditions do I need to check before processing?
- Are there any exceptions?
- Does this IF need a default condition?
This is also a good
time to look for pieces that can or should be broken out into child workflows.
Child workflows are a great way to divide up the process into logical groups
but it cannot pass it's status back to the main workflow so you have to account
for that. Child workflows can also be called by other workflows. So if you
notice many of your workflows are doing the same few steps, consider seeing if
this can be made into a child.
Finally, drawing
your process gives you something visual to share with your stakeholders.
Especially in complex workflows, it is good to walk through this with your
stakeholders to make sure they have thought through all the possible branches
and the logic associated with them.
Test in Test
I always recommend
creating your workflows in a development or test environment and using a
solution to move it to the production environment. This ensures that you have
an opportunity to fully test without the danger of harming any production
records. It also allows you to see the outcome of the workflow and demonstrate
to the stakeholders to ensure it is what is needed.
If you want to test
the workflow on a larger volume of records try importing records that meet the
criteria (even exporting from a production system if it is a workflow update
instead of full rewrite) or using the bulk edit feature. This will allow you to
quickly fire off a large number of the workflows so you can monitor the system
jobs and look for any errors.
I also find that
including workflows as part of a release raises the visibility. We never import
solutions to production unless it is our designated release. For releases, we
review all of the items going and determine which groups need to be aware of the
change. So the system team has an opportunity to ask questions early and user
are aware so they can provide input as well.
CRM Horror Story: My CRM horror story
is from back in the days of CRM 4.0. This was before solutions so most
workflows were created in live. I was a part of the CRM Team focused mainly on
development, training and troubleshooting. There was another group of power
users focused on reporting who had access to create workflows.
One of these
reporting users created a workflow to fill in some data on certain records. He
had it start when fields were edited including the Modified On field. The
workflow then updated 3 fields in 3 separate steps. He turned this on and then
imported 3000 records. So each of these records triggered a workflow and as
that workflow ran it updated the record 3 times and triggered 3 more workflows.
This brought the CRM
system to a halt! The problem was not obvious at first because we were unaware
of this workflow until we evaluated the system jobs. To resolve we have to
deactivate that workflow and give the reporting user a stern talking to (twice actually
because he tried to do it again).
Moral of the story -
limit access to create workflows, educate people on their impacts, ensure
people are aware of workflow effects and TEST before releasing to production!
Review System Jobs
It is very important
to know what is happening in your system. Get familiar with how the System Job
view looks - how many workflows are running in a given time period, what kind
of workflows, what other things do you see here. This is helpful so if there is
an issue you can look and know what you are expecting to see.
Keep an eye on your
suspended jobs (waiting) as well as failed jobs. If you have workflows that
wait, these will appear in your suspended jobs. Edit this view to pull in
additional details of the workflow (stage, regarding record details, etc.) so
that you can look for items that should not be waiting.
The capabilities of
Advanced Find are amazing so you can narrow down your results based on records
related to the workflow to specifically see items that may need more work.
Also look at System
jobs with an Error Message. This means that as it was processing it ran into an
error and could not continue. These workflows are still in a waiting or
suspended status. These should be manually reviewed. If you can resolve the
issue, you can resume the workflow so it moves forward. If you cannot resolve
it or the necessary processing was already done, then you should cancel the
system job. At the end of your review you do not want any error workflows still
in a waiting status.
As part of your
review of System Jobs with errors, you should evaluate if the Workflow needs to
be changed. For example, if the error was trying to update a task that had been
closed, you can add a check condition to the workflow to check that the task is
open before editing it.
Use Case: Maintenance Work
A great use case for
Workflows and Dialogs is maintenance. By this I mean record edits or changes
that power users may need to make that you do not want the average user to be
able to make.
For example, say
there is a date field that is automatically populated based on when another
field is changed. If you need to set this to a date in the past you can use a
dialog which asks what date it should be set to and then makes the change. (An
alternative tip provided by Mitch Milam I believe is to create an
"Administrator" form where all fields are editable. Make this only
available to System Administrators.)
Recently we have
also used this for test records. Instead of trusting that a user will handle
all the steps to ensure the record is properly marked as a test - create a
workflow that can be run. This workflow can append test to the name, add
comments, and even reassign to a test owner.
Other tips?
Here are the tips
from other panels:
- If you can't document it in a document flow then you shouldn't do it in a workflow
- Keep them clean - do not over-nest if statements. Try to break into child processes. More flexibility for future changes as well. Just don't forget to close all the doors by including stop workflow statements
- Clean them up - turn on automatic deletion and use bulk delete jobs for others
- Review system jobs to look at failed and waiting jobs, review the associated message to see if there was an error
- "When pigs fly" conditions - talk to the manager and also the person doing the work and get them involved in the planning. Still prepare for other situations. Consider a default condition that will send an email (or queue item) for awareness.
- Don’t underestimate the power of workflows
- Be careful what you trigger it off of - don't want it to be called over and over again. Look at the workflow possibilities before building custom code.
- Can combine with custom code to trigger workflows based on ribbon button clicks (JavaScript). Have script set another field that triggers the workflow.
- Be aware of the user security and impact on the workflow. On-Demand runs as the user. Automatically triggered runs as the workflow owner.
- Gus G tip for creating dummy records then remove with bulk delete to trigger workflow on a linked record - http://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/adopt2win/archive/2013/04/15/scheduling-recurring-workflows-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-online-and-on-premise
- Required fields do not apply to workflow, only on the form. Users will need to populate if they are assigned the record.
- Wait conditions - make sure to include a timeout and a way for users to cancel
- Trigger custom error messages with real-time workflows: http://survivingcrm.com/2013/11/using-real-time-workflows-to-show-error-messages/
- Remember you cannot trigger workflows off of updated to calculated fields
You can also view
the recording here: https://www.crmug.com/viewdocument/?DocumentKey=eb610407-13c0-4f38-968a-035bb433337d
There are so many
great uses for workflows! I try to never do anything twice - if I have to do it
more than once I should find another solution such as a workflow, bulk edit,
export, etc. So, what do you use workflows for? What are your tips for learning
and creating workflows?
