Close multiple activities with a workflow
Published Date : January 1, 2008
Kim Ralls is the owner and manager of Fourth Coffee, a shop in a large office building that serves soup and sandwiches for lunch, as well as coffee. Kim collects information about Fourth Coffee customers when people put their business cards in a big, blue soup pot she keeps on her counter. She saves this information in Microsoft Dynamics CRM as contact and account records so that she can let individual customers know when they've won a free lunch; and she sends faxes to each company, every Monday, to let people in that office know what her weekly specials are.
Because Kim wants to track each fax in the history for each account record, the dozens of faxes she sends each week result in a large number of fax records she has to close manually. By creating a workflow and applying it to the fax records instead, Kim can close all of her fax records at once.
On This Page
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Create and publish the workflow |
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Apply the workflow to your activity records |
Create and publish the workflow
If you're like Kim, you probably don't know any programming or scripting languages. Fortunately, creating workflows by using the Web application interface for Microsoft Dynamics CRM doesn't require this kind of complex technical knowledge. Even though you can create workflow logic as complex as you need it to be, you can automate many repetitive or common tasks with fairly simple workflows.
When you create a workflow, you can choose to make it available for yourself and your coworkers as an on-demand workflow or an automatic workflow. Automatic workflows start on their own, when the conditions defined in the workflow have been met. You start on-demand workflows yourself, whenever you want to perform the actions defined in the workflow logic.
Note
For detailed information on creating both types of workflows, as well as workflow templates (workflows that you can use as the basis for other workflows) and child workflows (workflows you can start from within other workflows), see Microsoft Dynamics CRM Help.
In this example, we'll create a workflow that sets the status of fax records to Completed, with a status reason of Sent.
Tip
Create similar workflows for each type of activity you work with so that you can also close them automatically when you need to.
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In the Navigation Pane, click Settings, and then click Workflows.
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On the Actions toolbar, click New.
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In the Create Workflow dialog box, set required properties for the workflow.
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In the Workflow name box, type Bulk Close Fax Activities.
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From the Entity list, select Fax.
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In the Type area, make sure that New blank workflow is selected.
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Click OK.
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In the Workflow Properties area in the top half of the Workflow form, set additional properties for the workflow.
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From the Publish As list, select Workflow.
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Under Available to Run, select On demand.
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Under Options for Automatic Workflows, clear the Record is created check box.
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In the Workflow Logic area in the lower half of the Workflow form, click Select this row and click Add Step.
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On the Workflow Logic toolbar, click Add Step and select Change Status.
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Click Type a step description here and replace the default text with Set status of fax to Sent.
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From the first Change record status to list, select Fax, and then select Sent.
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On the Form toolbar, click Save.
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On the Form toolbar, click Publish, and then click OK.
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Click Close.
Apply the workflow to your activity records
Now that you've created and published your new workflow, you can use it to close your activity records.
Note
Once you've closed an activity, you cannot edit or reactivate it.
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In the Navigation Pane, click Workplace, and then click Activities.
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From the Type list, select Fax.
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Select the fax records that you want to close.
Tip
Press the CTRL key on your keyboard to select multiple records. You can also create an Advanced Find query to find records that meet specific criteria, such as the date that they were created on or the marketing campaign with which they are associated.
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On the Actions toolbar, click Run Workflow.
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In the Look Up Records dialog box, select your Bulk Close Fax Activities workflow, and then click OK.
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In the confirmation message, click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM starts your workflow and changes the status of the fax records that you selected to Completed, with a status reason of Sent.
Tip
You can view closed activities in the activity's history. In the activity record, under Details, click History.
