CRM 4.0 Workflow Challenges – Part 1 (Fields on the Form and Read-only Fields)

While the workflow engine in Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 is a very powerful tool, there are a few challenges when designing the workflow rules – especially around building an ‘update’ step.  Here are a few challenges and some suggested workarounds for each.

• Fields being updated MUST be on the CRM form.  You’ll learn this one pretty quickly as you go to set the properties for an entity and realize the fields you can update are those on the form.  If there’s a need to update a field via workflow but that field doesn’t need to be viewable on the form then using javascript to hide the field is probably your best bet.
• Update read-only fields via workflow.  Another challenge when updating a record via workflow is around a field set as read-only on the form.  In the workflow ‘Set Properties’ section the form you are editing is the actual form the users see – so read-only fields are not editable.  It takes a few steps to get around but nothing trick: 
1. Go to the form in customizations and remove the read-only setting on the attribute
2. Save the form and publish the entity
3. Open (or create) the workflow step and set the value in the field that will be read-only
4. Go back to the form in customizations and set the field back to read-only
5. Save the form and publish the entity

Part 2 will focus on challenges around picklist and bit attributes so stay tuned…

Comments

[Brad Symons]

Fields being updated MUST be on the CRM form.

Thats actually incorrect. there is a tab added at the end of the form when doing an update via workflow. its called "Additional Fields".
This has all the other fields on it that are not on the form.

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