Microsoft Dynamics CRM Breakthrough Webinar Series: Workflows and Processes

Copyright © 2011 Infinity Info Systems | Proprietary and Confidential – Not For Distribution

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Breakthrough Webinar Series:

Workflows and Processes


Presenter:

Michael HammonsDirector, Solution ArchitectsEmail: [email protected]

Jenn Van PeltMarketing AssociateEmail: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Agenda

• What• Why• Capabilities/Benefits• Workflow Examples/Demo• Testing & Troubleshooting• Wrap up/QA


WHAT ARE PROCESSES (WORKFLOW)

Infinity Info Systems

Copyright © 2010 Infinity Info Systems – Proprietary and Confidential


What are processes?

• A business process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service, product or goal

• Two Types– automated processes that rely solely on

communication among applications based on a set of rules, and

– interactive processes that also rely on people to initiate and run the process, and to make the appropriate decisions during the running of the process.


Dynamics CRM Processes

• Automates business tasks– Creates consistency in how you interact with your

customers

• Consist of:– Workflows - Automated processes that may require user inputs to

start. These processes do not require user inputs to run until they are completed. Run in the background.

– Dialogs - Interactive processes that require user inputs to start and run until they are completed. When a user starts the dialog process, they are presented with a wizard-like interface, and must make appropriate selections in the wizard pages, and continue to run it until it is completed.


Dynamics CRM Processes

• Based on Windows® Workflow Foundation® 4

• SharePoint and CRM share the same foundational workflow layer, the two can share the same workflow processes and data.

• Can use Web Builder (in CRM), XAML or Visual Studio Workflow Designer to visually design and create workflows.


WHY WORKFLOWInfinity Info Systems



Why• Reduce the amount of manual unnecessary actions

between people as they perform business functions. – E.g. to reach a decision, groups typically follow a series of

steps.

• The number of actions that occur can inhibit speed and the quality of decisions.

• Software that simplifies and manages this "human workflow" results in more speed, overall effectiveness of the interactions, and often a reduction in errors.


Example Uses• Contract approval Guiding a proposed contract among members of an organization

who must approve or reject it.

• Expense reporting Managing the submission of an expense report and associated receipts, reviewing the report, approving it, and reimbursing the submitter.

• Technical support Guiding the progress of a technical support incident as it is opened by a customer, investigated by a support engineer, routed to technical experts, resolved, and added to a knowledge base.

• Interviewing Managing the process of interviewing a job candidate. This includes scheduling and tracking interview appointments, collecting interview feedback as it accumulates, making that feedback available to subsequent interviewers, and facilitating the hire/no-hire decision.

• Content publishing Managing the approval of the publication of content on the Internet presence site of an enterprise.


Benefits

• Increase productivity• Increase response times• Lower cost• Reduce errors• Create consistency• Automate (Remove) the mundane


WORKFLOW BENEFITSInfinity Info Systems



Workflow Deep Dive• Workflows can do a lot more…• …because they have a lot more to do!

Entity Can be triggered by Can create

SharePoint Site Yes Yes

SharePoint Document Location Yes Yes

Goal Metric Yes No

Goal Yes Yes

Queue Yes No

Queue Item Yes Yes

Connection Role Yes No

Connection Yes Yes


Dialogs – Prompts & Responses

• Pages (think of them as Steps)

• Prompts the user• Collects responses• Captures details• Triggers updates and

next actions


Queues and Queue Items

• Any record type can be routed to queues• How it works:

1. A record is routed to Queue A2. A queue item is created in Queue A (1:1 to underlying

record)3. If removed from Queue A, queue item goes away4. If routed to Queue B, queue item is moved to Queue B


Queues, Queue Items and Workflows

• Typical scenarios: routing, assignment, escalation

In CRM workflow designer, route to queue with Create Queue Item

In workflow designer, route to queue with Create Queue Item


Example

Round-Robin Lead Routing and Service Level Agreement (SLA) Enforcement• Round-Robin process:

– Custom Counter entity with 1:N to Lead– Automatic workflow does this:

1. Makes selected lead record a child of counter2. Assigns/routes based on value of counter field3. Increments (eventually resets) counter field


Round-Robin Record Assignment


SLA Enforcement

• Set a timer• Check for status

changes• Trigger next action

based on field change or lack of change– E.g. notify manager


Dialog Process Drill-Down

• Workflows– Asynchronous– May require UI to start,

never to complete– Can be triggered by

events or started by user– Run in background

• Dialogs– Synchronous– Always require UI to

start and to complete– Always started by a user– User interacts with

dialog process through to completion

– Can call other Processes


Dialog Topics

• Dialog Basics• Query CRM Data and dynamic queries• Searching for records and handling results• Link Child Dialog and recursive dialogs• Using Variables in dialogs• Calling dialogs with URLs


Review: User Experience

Dialog Name

Here is a Prompt and Response pair

This is one Page


Review: Designer Experience

Page

Prompt and Response

Query CRM Data

Input Argument gets value passed from parent dialog

Variables used for storing intermediate values as dialog runs


Actions and Conditions

• Add Step for Dialogs • Add Step for Workflows


Dialog Conditions

• New options in Local Values section shed light on important new concepts:– Dialog gives access to variables

defined in dialog process– Responses store value of response to

prompt– Queries, e.g., Contacts for Account,

give access to Records property that contains record count returned by query!


Using Query CRM Data

• Virtually any CRM data can be queried in a dialog: accounts, contacts, products, users, business units…

• A query’s label becomes its Query Variable name…


Labels and Query Variables• …so give them good names!


Dynamic Queries

• While you can query for “all active accounts”, you generally won’t want to!

• How many records are too many?

• And how do you narrow them down?

• Dynamic queries let you filter query results:– By the current record– By a user’s response– By a previous query


Dynamic Queries• Basic technique always the same: use the Define Query dialog’s

Modify Query Variables tab to substitute a value into fetchxml• Consider this dialog, written for the account entity

Written against Account, so we can substitute in using Dynamic values


Checking Record CountQueries have Record Count property can use in conditional:


Link Child Dialog and Recursive Processes

Conceptually: In the Designer:


Calling Dialogs with URLs

• The dialog user experience is presented in Dynamics CRM forms

• Therefore, they can be called with the URL-addressable forms technique

• Why would you want to do this?• What about a dialog written for the User entity?

– Approach 1: Do you want to force users to navigate to the User data grid and select their record and run it from the ribbon?

– Approach 2: Let them click a button on a dashboard labeled “Lead Intake Process”


URL-Addressable Dialogs

• By-hand approach: run a dialog and on the first form, press Ctrl+N

• Question is: how to create a URL like this one dynamically?

Org ID

Dialog GUID

User GUID

https://infinityinfo2011.crm.dynamics.com/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx?DialogId=%7b5EDDF228-4220-491F-B752-A825A85A5B64%7d&EntityName=lead&ObjectId=%7b50E6EC5F-DA07-410F-B1BC-611CC7538FE2%7d

https://infinityinfo2011.crm.dynamics.com/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx?DialogId

https://infinityinfo2011.crm.dynamics.com/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx?DialogId


Use an HTML Web Resource

<HTML><HEAD><SCRIPT src="../../ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx"></SCRIPT><META charset=utf-8></HEAD><BODY contentEditable=true> <BR><BR><A onclick='window.navigate(“<<orgurl>>/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx?DialogId=%7b<<DialogGUID>>%7d&EntityName=systemuser&ObjectId="+GetGlobalContext().getUserId() )' href="#">Run Dialog Process</A></BODY></HTML>

HTML like this can be called from custom ribbon button, or from dashboard component:


Demonstrations

• Dialog Basics• Query CRM Data• Dynamic Queries


TESTING & TROUBLESHOOTINGInfinity Info Systems



Troubleshooting

• Retry Count – This simply shows how many times the workflow has failed and been tried again.

• Postponed Until - This shows until when the workflow is postponed


Troubleshooting

• Test in a safe environment• Package as a solution then deploy to

production


Detailed Error Info

• This shows the full XML error and exception that was produced by Workflow Foundation


Process Cleanup

• Per Workflow job deletion – In CRM 4.0, this was handled globally via a registry key setting.– CRM 2011 you can decided if you want to

preserve history on some workflows, while deleting lots of noise from others.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968520

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968520


http://www.infinityinfo.com/events/upcoming

For more information contact: Jennifer Van Pelt

Marketing AssociateTel: 646.747.6403

Email: [email protected]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Breakthrough Series: Social Media and CRM

March 29th / 2pm-3pm

Microsoft Dynamics i3 EventMicrosoft Offices, NYC

February 28th / 9am-3pmFor more information, visit: www.infinityi3.com


http://www.infinityi3.com/

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Breakthrough Webinar Series: Workflows and Processes

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