MB-310 Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Workflows configuration

1. Configuring simple workflows

Welcome back. In this video, you will learn about workflows. Workflows typically represent a business process within the organization. It defines how a document should be flowing to the next level, where who should act on this particular document, who should approve the document. Right? So let us take a quick look at an example here. If you take a look at the vendor invoice related workflow, typically this might be the requirement. So someone records the vendor invoice here and based on the value of the invoice, if it is less than $10,000, it might need to go to Accounts Payable Supervisor for approval. If it is more than $10,000, it should go to Accounts Payable Manager. Right? So this is a simple workflow requirement where based on the value of the invoice journal or based on the value of your your invoice, the document must be routed to different approvals. Okay? So like this, based on the complexity of the business and based on the complexity of the requirements, you might need to configure the complex workflows within the 365 Finance and Operations system.

Okay, so let us take a look at how do you configure those workflows in the system, so that based on the requirement from your customers, the documents will be routed to different approvals. Okay, so these are what we are going to look at as part of our learning on the workflows. So you will understand the workflow architecture, elements and actions create and set up the workflows. And there are some properties that you will have to set so that the approvers will get some notifications, so they’ll get some text, that why are they getting this document for approval. And you will understand different elements like a manual task and an automated task. And then how do you assign these workflows to different users? So, these are all part of the workflow configuration and we are going to look at them right now. Okay, so let me take you into the application. Now, currently, I am taking an example of defining a workflow for the newly created journal name, right? So we created a new journal name in the previous video and I am going ahead to configure a workflow for the newly created journal name, right? So here is a requirement.

So anybody who creates the journal using the travel expense journal name, they will have to submit the document, submit that particular transaction for the approval process and that must go for the approval. So that is a requirement right now. Okay, let me just take you to the general journals and let me create a new journal and take the journal name. Sorry. The one that we were using is this travel expand the journal, right? So without the need of anyone approving this particular journal, right? So now the requirement from the customer has changed. So the customer needs the travel expenses to be approved before somebody can post it. Right? So for this purpose, let us go ahead and create a new workflow. Alright? So firstly take a look at this one here. Currently you are able to directly post this journal, right? So you have this post button enabled. Now let us go to the workflow configuration. So I go to the general ledger module. Under general ledger module I have this general ledger workflows. Okay, each module has its own space for the workflows, right?

So let’s go to this general ledger workflows. So similarly if you want to look at the workflows that are available in the other modules, you will be able to go to that particular module like Accounts payable and go to the setup. You will have the Accounts payable workflows. All right, like this, each module has its own workflows and these workflows are predefined in the system. For example, if you want a workflow for purchase orders then that is already available in the system and you can use it. Similarly there are certain places where you do not have any workflows available by default. So in such cases you will approach your developer and get it configured for the business. Okay, so let’s talk about it a little more detail a little later. And for now let us go ahead and do the configuration for general ledger workflows, okay? Right, so in the workflows if you click this new button so that is where system will ask you which workflow that you want to create. You see here you have different workflows here and the one that we need right now is ledger daily journal workflow because if you go to your journal names so the one for which we need the workflow process is for journal journals, right? So this is the one that we created and you see here the journal type that we are selecting is daily, right? And that is the reason that this is being available in the general journals, right? So because of the reason our workflow is associated to the general journals, you will have to create this ledger daily journal workflow. Okay? So let’s go ahead with this configuration.

So if you click the workflow type here then system is going to ask you to log in to provide the credentials and login. So once you provide the credentials you can see the workflow canvas gets opened like this. So this is actually a beautiful space to create the workflow configuration because I really like it. So it is just like how do you configure your visio, right? So that is how it is. So you will have the start element and the end element and your workflow configuration should come in between these two elements. All right? So you can see the different workflow elements here where you see the approved daily journal element and the conditional decision elements, manual decision element and parallel activity and then sub workflow. Okay, so let us take a look at this one here. So whenever you need an approval to be happening for the document. What you do is you will drag this approval element here into the canvas, okay? And then you will have to connect your start element to this approval. So you connect this here. So then system knows that soon after the document is submitted, it should look for this approval element. And whoever the person configured to be an Approver, he will have to approve this document. Okay? And then you have this end element here.

So connect your approval element with an end element. So we are configuring a simple workflow at the beginning so that we understand. How does that work? Fine, right, so you have this approval element and what you do is double click on this approval element. Then you will see the steps in the approval element. So there will be some cases where multiple approvals approvals are required for the document. Then what you do is you might add multiple steps in it. Okay? So for now, let us make it simple. Let us go ahead with the simple workflow configuration where we’re going to do the approval assignment in this step. So click on the step and you see here, you are seeing an error symbol here. So what is that telling you? Selected assignment type none is not supported because still we did not do any configuration. It is telling me that the required fields are not yet filled. Okay? So anytime that you see the error mark on the elements, that means that you have some issues with the element. So you will have to take an action.

Click on the properties. I’m sorry. So what you do is give a right click on the element and click on the properties, okay? Or else you can click on the element and then click on the properties here on top. Fine. So work item subject and work item instructions. So these are the instructions for the approval and this is a subject for him. You can also get these messages in the email. So that is the reason the subject and instructions are important to enter. So let us enter. So we tell the approval that this is about GL Journal approval and we can give some instructions to the Approver, right? So click on the Workflow and approve to be able to approve this document. So these instructions can be anything. So I’m just keeping it pretty simple right now. Click this, set up some instructions like this. And this assignment. Tab. Click on this assignment tab. This is where you will choose who should be the Approver for the document, okay? So you can configure the approvals based on different selections here. So firstly, you can define an approval based on the user. So select the user here and you look at this user tab. So here you will be able to choose the Approver who should approve your document. In our case, we want this test user to approve it. So I’m selecting this and you look at this.

So this is user based workflow configuration. Sometimes you may want the group of approvers to be approving the document. You might want the document to be routed to a group of approvers and probably one of them approving it should be sufficient or else you might want all of them to approve the document, right? So in such cases what you can do is you choose this to be participant. When you say participant then you’re going to see the role based here. So it tells you the type of participant. So for now, what we do is let us take user group participants. So you understood the user group some time before, right?

So the list of users in the organization can be grouped into the user groups. Okay? So using that user group, what you can tell the system is that these are the users who should be approving the GL journals, general journals, okay? So in such cases you can take this as user group participants and you take the users who should be approving it here. We were dealing with this travel expense approvers user group, right? So if I select this then yes, all the users who are part of this user group will be able to approve the document. Okay? So let us take it slowly. Firstly, let us just go ahead with the user and let us leave this to this selected user test user. Then go ahead and close this. Okay? And if you see here there is no error symbol here which means it is all right. Go back to the workflow canvas, click on this workflow here so that you will be back to your initial screen and scroll down.

And sometimes if there are any errors, you’ll be able to see the errors right here in the error pane. Okay? So you click on this error pane and if there are any errors you’ll be able to see them here. So you look at this, there is a warning and there is a reason system is not really highlighting too much about it, but it is telling you that you must define submission instructions for workflow in order to help users understand what actions they need to take. So even for the submitter we can set some instructions so that they know what they’ll have to actually do. So how can you do that? You see here, that is what even this caution mark is alerting. You must define submission instructions, right? So to be able to define the submission instructions, right click Properties and submission instructions. Please click on Workflow button to submit the document for approval.

Okay? Once you do that, you click on this error pane and you see nothing here, right? So everything is all right. Now scroll it down and you’re going to see this save and close option here. So if you do not want your changes to be saved then you’re going to say cancel. And obviously we need our changes to be saved, right? So say save and close. So you can keep some version notes here. If you want to add some text for your reference, you’ll be able to add some version notes here. Otherwise you can just leave that empty and say okay, so once you save, okay, system will ask you do you want to activate the new version or you want to keep this as an inactive version for time being? So for now, just say activate the new version. Say okay, once you do that, automatically your workflow canvas gets closed for the first time. When you’re working on it, it might take a little time, so do not try to close it and force close this one. All right, so that got closed and what we do is let us go back to the finance and operations application now so you are here, close this then refresh it.

So you can see here, this is the new workflow configuration that we created. So once after you configure the workflow and you save and close the workflow, then you will see the workflow ID generated for your configuration. Okay, so this ID holds all the configuration that we did right now. Okay, so what we do now is go back to our journal name and select the journal name for which we want the approval to be configured. Then edit this. Then here I mentioned that this is the approval workflow that we will have to use, right? So click on this approval workflow and in this workflow define which workflow configuration to be used. You see here, this is the one that we created, right? So select this and system will give you a confirmation message here.

Say yes and save this. So with this your workflow is configured and we also associated our workflow to this particular journal name. Okay? So this is how you configure the workflows and associate them to the journal names for any module. So for example, if you go to the accounts payable, you have the invoice journals and payment journals and similarly you have the customer payment journals. So likewise there are many places where you need the workflows for the journals. Okay? So this is how you will configure the workflows and associate them. All right, now let us see the impact of this one. Now I will close this configuration and let us go to the general journals and I will create a new journal here and select the journal name. Travel expenses, and I saved it. You can notice here the post button is disabled. Why is it so why is this button disabled?

That is because the workflow is enabled. So it is defined in such a way that any document that is created in the system using this particular journal name that must go for approval, right? And that is the reason nobody will be able to post this transaction until and unless it is approved. Okay, so how do you get this approved? So, you see here, you have these three dots here, right. And if you click that, you have your Workflow button. It is not that the button is hidden. It is just because of the resolution of your monitor. So what you can do is reduce your zoom and you see the button here, right? So being Accounts Payable clerk, after entering this record, I will be able to submit this document. Okay. So as an end user, I’ll go ahead and submit this document now.

So once this is submitted, then it can be approved. Okay. So I can put here some comments like, please approve, right? So that way the user can enter the journal and then submit it for approval. All right? And once this is submitted, that is where the Approver will be able to approve the document. And once this is actually submitted, that is when the system looks at the workflow configuration that we defined. And based on that, it will route to the respective Approvers. Fine. So let us do one thing now. I will open the application with the approvers users user ID. Then we will see how he will be able to approve it. Okay. So before that, let us take a note of this journal batch number. That is six, five, nine, right? Let us refresh the screen. And you see here you have an option to either recall this journal, or else you can see the history of the workflow.

So recalling is, basically, I forgot to enter some details, then I can recall the document, and then I can do that entry and then do it, submit it later. Right? So, in fact, for this particular document, what I did is I did not even enter the lines. So that was by mistake that I thought I entered the lines already, and then I submitted it. But before it went to the approval, I recollected that, yes, I did not even enter the lines. So then I can recall it. That is the use of this recall option. Otherwise, you can use this view history to know like where exactly this document is right now. Okay. That helps you to go to that particular approval and probably remind him that he still did not approve the document. And you don’t need to really do it unless you want to do it, because system will notify him that a document is waiting for his approval, and he will need to take an action on that. Okay? So let’s not talk about all that stuff right now. So let us take a quick look at this workflow history. So always I recommend that you scroll it completely down in the history. Then you can see literally what is happening, this workflow configuration. Okay. So you see here, workflow activated and approval started. So, because we configured a simple workflow, you can see here, it is telling me that the approval started and it is also giving me the step number. So I will also show you, like, how do you create your workflow in such a way that it can give you clear picture on what is happening. But in this case, you look at this one here.

The step started and a work item is created. When it says work item is created, that actually means that the work item is ready. The document is ready for the approval by that particular user. You see here, it tells you that this is assigned to which user. In our case, we are using that test user, right? So this is the username and this is the user ID that we created. So that is the reason you are seeing his user name here, and this is the user ID. Okay, so this work items will tell you like, yes, it is waiting for the approval by the user test. Okay, now what do we do? Let me log in with the test user and approve this document for you so that you will see how this document will look like from the approvals view. All right? Now, I have logged into the system as that test user.

You can see here I’m seeing this test, right, te test. And this is my user ID. All right? So as an approver, when I log into the system, you can see here on my dashboard, I can see the work items assigned to me. Okay? So you can take a look at this one here. There is one document that is waiting for my approval. And this is the work item instructions that we have put in the approval element. So I’ve just said that this is GL journal approval, and that is the subject that we have put there, right? And that is what we are getting here. So this work item subjects also can be configured beautifully in such a way that the approvers will know that the approval is required for which document number, which journal number. All right? So let us look at that placeholder configurations as we go forward. So for now, what I do is I click on these work items assigned to me so that I will be able to take an action on that document directly from here.

Also, I can directly go ahead and approve it or reject it or do anything on that particular document. Okay? Otherwise, let’s duplicate this. If you go to the general journals and open up the general journals, you look at the document that is created. So I’m sorting it with the latest one. So this is the one that we were dealing with. And you click here, you see, as an approver, I have the options to either approve it or reject it. I can also request a change because okay, for example, as an approver, I looked at these lines and I see that the transaction is not even entered because there is no debit and no credit right, yeah, I understand that.

That could be a mistake by the user. Then I can tell him that I’m requesting a change to this one, or else sometimes I can delegate the responsibility of approving it to some other user, perhaps my manager. Right? So I can take all these actions on the document. Okay, so let’s go to even this view. So in the work items assigned to me section, I can directly take an action on this one. Or else I can click this open button here that will take me to that particular journal. You see, that simple. It is, right? So you can go ahead and upload this document. All right, so this is how you will configure the simple workflow. And I wanted to firstly show you a flow and then we go ahead with some understanding on the complex workflow configurations. All right? So that’s all for this session and thank you so much for watching you.