Apart from the common attributes, the following are the two main attributes for any business process flow:
- Primary entity: All Business Process Flows, whether out-of-box or custom, need to be associated to an entity in Dynamics CRM. Primary entity defines the entity to which a Business Process Flow is associated with. It basically means that at each stage, the Business Process Flow will refer to one or more than one fields of that entity.
We can create a Business Process Flow for any entity as long as the entity is configured for Business Process Flows. By default, when a new entity is created in Dynamics CRM, it is not configured for Business Process Flows. The user must check an option to enable the entity for Business Process Flows:
Business process flow configuration
It is not necessary to select this option while creating the entity. Therefore, even if a user forgets to check this option, he/she can always go back, select the option, and save the record. However, once selected and saved, this option cannot be undone by the user.
When an entity is configured for Business Process Flows, Dynamics CRM will automatically create two fields, StageId and ProcessId:
Business process flow configuration
- Status: A business process flow can acquire two possible states: Activated and Draft. If its status is Activated, it basically implies that users can use this process for their work. Otherwise, if it is Draft, it implies that users cannot use the process in its current state.