General Interest

Follow a workflow from creation through action

You can use workflows to automate many common tasks and processes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. They can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. You don't need to be a programmer to create a workflow; you just need to understand your department's business processes.

To help get you started, the following diagram illustrates the steps for creating and using a workflow.

Workflow creation diagram

There are two ways to add a workflow:

Create a workflow in the Workflows area of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Import a workflow using Import Customizations in the Customization area of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Workflows are available for purchase from third-party vendors.

When you create a workflow, you follow five basic steps:

Create an empty workflow or use a workflow template to create the workflow.
Specify the workflow properties, such as its name and the type of records it acts upon.
Add conditions that specify when to run the workflow and actions that implement the workflow.
By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes many types of actions, such as sending e-mail and changing the status of a record. More complex or organization-specific actions can be created in several ways:
- You can create custom workflow actions (activities) by using the information that is available in the Workflows section of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK.
- You can purchase custom workflow actions from third-party vendors.
Any custom workflow action must be registered (typically done by installing a third-party custom workflow action), and then it will appear in the Workflow form in the list of possible actions.
Publish the workflow.
Test the workflow. If your organization has a test version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, test the workflow there prior to using it. If not, test it on a small number of records.

A workflow can be applied to records in one of the following ways:

A person using Microsoft Dynamics CRM can select an on-demand workflow to apply to a record or group of records.
Specific conditions can trigger an automatic workflow.
A third-party application can start a workflow by using the SDK request ExecuteWorkflowRequest.

When you apply a workflow to records, or when a workflow starts automatically, it creates individual workflow jobs for each record. Each of these jobs performs the actions defined in your workflow logic. You can monitor the workflow jobs to check progress and make sure that there have been no problems with the workflow itself, or with its workflow jobs.