What is a Business Process ?

A business process is a structured set of activities or tasks designed to achieve a specific organizational goal or outcome. It represents the workflow or series of steps followed by a company to deliver a product or service, manage operations, or handle other critical functions. Business processes can span multiple departments, systems, or individuals, and often involve decision points, approvals, and actions based on conditional logic. They are designed to be repeatable, measurable, and optimized over time to improve efficiency, quality, and effectiveness.

How to Create a FlowOn Business Process

To create a FlowOn Business Process (BP), follow these steps:

1. Assign a Unique Name
   Every business process must have a unique identifier to differentiate it from other processes within the system. Choose a clear and descriptive name that represents the workflow's purpose.

2. Select the Process Entity
   The process entity is the Dynamics 365 entity on which the business process will run. This entity defines the scope of the data that the process will interact with. For example, if the business process involves case management, the case entity would be selected.

3. Associate with a FlowOn Project
   Each business process must be linked to a FlowOn Project. The project serves as a container or grouping for related processes, making it easier to manage and track multiple processes.

   

4. Set the isAction Flag
   If you want the business process to be exposed as a process action (meaning it can be invoked programmatically or integrated with other processes), you need to set the isAction flag to true. This allows the business process to be utilized as an action in other workflows.

5. Provide an Optional Description
   Adding a description is optional but recommended. It helps explain the purpose or specifics of the business process, which is useful for documentation and collaboration with other team members.

6. Enable Tracing
   Enabling the Stage Tracing feature during the creation of the business process allows you to monitor and trace the process during runtime. This is particularly useful in development and testing environments, as it provides insights into data flow, decision-making, and stage transitions in real-time.

After creating the business process, the FlowOn BPM engine automatically generates a draft version of the process. This draft version becomes available for editing in the BP Process Designer, where consultants or developers can configure stages, define decision trees, and set process logic. The draft remains in an editable state until it is finalized and published, allowing for iterative adjustments and testing before going live.