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Tips for Organizing Workflows in Dynamics 365 for Sales

Post Author: Joe D365 |

If you are using workflows to help control data and processes in Dynamics 365, you may end up having several workflows for a specific entity, like Opportunity. Also, you may have several workflows that are child workflows of a specific workflow trigger, for example, On Create of a record or On Change of a specific field.

It is a good idea to name the workflow in a way that describes what it does in broad terms like "Assign Opportunity to Owner of the Account." But what if this was a child workflow to a workflow that started On Create of the Opportunity that looked at other criteria before determining to assign the opportunity to the Account owner? In this case, we recommend using a naming and numbering convention to group Parent-Child workflows together so that when looking at a list of workflows the user can see which ones are related to each other and under what trigger.

Another recommendation is to include the entity name or an abbreviation of the entity name near the beginning when naming the workflow. This is because when doing solution deployments from a development environment to a test or production environment, the selection list for Processes (workflows) doesn't show to which entity the process is related, and when you have dozens of processes to look through this becomes very helpful.

Additionally, for entities that have multiple processes based on different triggers, including the event trigger in the name is helpful.

Finally, knowing the sequence within a group of related workflows is a good idea, so some form of a numbering system can help when included in the naming.

For example, let's say we have a set of steps that we want to happen within each stage of an opportunity. For each new stage, we could set the opportunity probability and perhaps assign some tasks and send emails. The tasks and emails may be broken out into child workflows called from a parent workflow.

This diagram shows how a set of parent-child workflows might be related.

This is how one might name such a group of related workflows to keep them organized:

Parent Workflow that is triggered when the opportunity stage changes: Opp On Chg Stage 1.0

First child workflow called from parent: Opp On Chg Stage 1.1 – Stage 1 send email and set probability

Next child workflow: Opp On Chg Stage 1.2 – Stage 2 send email, assign task and set probability

And so on.

Your Process View List, when sorted on Name, might then look like this:
Opp On Chg Stage 1.0

Opp On Chg Stage 1.1 – Stage 1 send email and set probability (child to 1.0)

Opp On Chg Stage 1.2 – Stage 2 send email, assign task and set probability (child to 1.0)
Opp On Chg Stage 1.3 – Stage 3 send email, set probability, assign to closing department (child to 1.0)

Opp On Chg Stage 1.3.1 – send email (child to 1.3)

 

 

If you create workflows that update or "fix" records in Dynamics 365 manually (on demand) or perform other types of administrative functions, I call those "Utility" workflows and they are usually limited to a specific administrator user. To keep them separate from other workflows, prefix them with the word "Utility": or "Util:". For example: "Util: Fix Opportunity Probability".

You will find that if you put a little thought into how you name you workflows, it will make your work much easier whenever you or someone else who did not originally create the workflows might need to go back and research or modify them.

For more helpful tips and tricks check out our blog!

Happy Dynamics 365'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

One comment on “Tips for Organizing Workflows in Dynamics 365 for Sales”

  1. Hi Joe,
    any suggestion how to name the child workflow which is triggered from multiple different parent workflows?
    Thanks!

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