Workflows in business central

Workflows in Business Central

Workflows are ways in which you can manage processes. Workflows
can be used to automate actions based on other actions and are
frequently used for approvals. For example, a workflow can be created
to prevent a Purchase Order from posting until someone with the
required authority sanctions the action. You can set Workflows up to
be approvable by either User Groups or individuals. In this post, we are
going to run through several examples as to how you can run
workflows in Business Central.

Setting up Workflows
In the Workflows page, you can see what workflows have been set up
against different entities. It’s advisable that users should utilize the
predefined Workflow Templates within Business Central instead of
starting from scratch as they can be challenging to set up. To do this,
go to ‘Workflow Templates’, ‘Actions’ and ‘New Workflow from
Template’. From here, select the relevant Template. Here, we have
selected an Item Approval Workflow. See below: 
Inside, you should get this page:
In this example I am creating a Customer Approval Workflow, but
there’s boundless flexibility on the types of Workflow you can create
here.
Workflow event
This relates to an event or action that occurs within the system that
will trigger a response. For example, adjusting a customer’s credit limit
or posting an order.

Workflow condition
This refers to the condition that moderates the workflow event that
you specified in the ‘When Event’ field. When you select the field,
the ‘Event Conditions’ window opens in which you can specify
condition values for predefined lists of relevant fields. 

Workflow responses
This relates to the actions that will be performed by the system when
an event occurs that meets the predefined condition. If you click into
the blue text, you will be able to open a subpage to edit the Workflow.
If I click into the blue text in the ‘Then Response’ column, I can
establish several key fields. See below: 

Within the set response you have created, there are options
depending on what the workflow is. Make sure you are on the correct
Line at the time for the options to appear. If the top Line on the above
image was highlighted, it would say ‘You cannot set options for this
workflow response’.  

The ‘Due Date Formula’ field determines after what point does the
workflow become overdue. The ‘Delegate After’ field allows you to
determine when authority to authorize the Workflow request is passed
on to someone else. You can have the ‘Delegate After’ field set to a
lower value than the Workflow ‘Due Date’ meaning authority is passed
on prior to the Workflow becoming overdue. 

The ‘Approver Type’ field allows you to specify what type of person(s)
has authority over that particular event. There’s ‘Approver’,
‘Salesperson/Purchaser’ and ‘Workflow User Group’.  

Approval Limit Type

The Approval Limit Type allows you to determine the way in which the
Workflow approval request is sent and to whom. Depending on what
values you enter, new fields will appear. For example, if our Workflow
had an Approval Limit Type of ‘Specific Approver’, an Approver ID
entry field would appear to you to select who the Specific Approver is. 

The other options in the Approval Limit Type are: 

 Approver Chain
  Approval chains work on the basis that there’s a
hierarchy of approval and the request won’t be
accepted until it has been approved by the person
with the authority to approve, and those below.
 Specific Approver
 All goes to one particular individual. For example,
all Sales Credit Memos go to Craig
 Direct Approver
 Goes to the next person in the chain, regardless of

their limits
 First Qualified Approver
 If it was a monetary value that exceeded the
approver of the user who requested it, it would
simply send the request to the first person it gets
to in the chain with sufficient authority to approve

Workflow Responses
The Workflow Responses themselves vary on how you create the
Workflow. In the above situations we have been using a Template
which is very much advised. In instances where they are made from
scratch, the responses may not be limited to simply ‘approve’ or
‘reject’. Below is an example of where you make a Workflow from
scratch, there are more options to be flexible:

An example
Using an Approval Type of ‘Salesperson/Purchaser’, the specific
Salesperson/Purchaser will be the first one with the power to
authorise. But if the salesperson’s approver has a Value limit and the
amount in question exceeds that, it will be passed onto the approver
of the approver (i.e. up the chain).

Let’s create an example. If Janet makes an order with ‘IT’ as the

salesperson/purchaser code, then Brian is in charge of approving that.
Brian would not be in charge where the amount in question is over
what he is authorised for. Where it is over that value £5000, then David
will be the approver who, as we can see, has an unlimited authority to
approve payments. 

If it’s set up to be for ‘Approver’, then the request would merely go

against the Approver of the User who created the approval request. 

If it was for a Workflow User Group, it would go to the Users assigned

to the User Group. Where you click to make the request go to a
Workflow User Group, then a new field will appear underneath
allowing you to choose which one.  

Approval User Setup

Both the requesters and the approvers of Workflows should be set up
on the Approval User Setup page. The system needs to recognise what
action is requested/required for every individual or group in the
system. You can also set how approvals are communicated to the
people involved, i.e. entering their email addresses. And then going
into ‘Notification Setup’ and making sure E-mail is the default
communication method. 

Workflow User Group 

Within a Workflow User Group record, you will find something that
looks like this:

If you have the Sequence No. set to the same number, then both users
will receive the approval request at the same time. If one is 1 and the
other is 2, then 1 will get theirs and then it will go to 2 to accept. Both
have to accept in order for it to be approved.  

To access ‘Approval Request Entries’, type it into the search bar. For
those who don’t have permission to authorise the workflow
permission request or didn’t send the request originally, it might not
show in there. When you initially create a Workflow, you can set an
individual approver there. 

Delegation

Approval requests can be delegated. This is typically used where the

person normally responsible is out of office. To do this, go to the
Requests to Approve page, click the relevant Line and then Delegate. 

Item Approval Workflow: using the ‘Blocked’ field

Items can be setup regardless of Item Approval Workflows. The system
cannot stop people from making them, except in one particular case.
This one exception is when you remove all conditions entirely. The
problem is that this creates approval requests for everything which is
extremely counterproductive. We believe using a template where
‘blocked’ is turned on by default is the best approach as then no
transactions can be made with the field on, but if it is turned off then
an approval request is sent.  
How does this work?

This makes an approval request as soon as the person who has

changed the field leaves the Card. When they come back to the Card
prior to it being approved, it’s still blocked. So if you did accidentally
turn off ‘blocked’, you can turn it back on before leaving the card and
it won’t send an approval request. 

When you create a Workflow from an Item Approval Workflow

template, amend the ‘When Event’ top line. The template’s default
value is ‘approval of an item is requested’. This caught me off guard a
few times. I expected it to work on the basis (with its name) that an
approval would be sent for the creation of a new Item. However, this
isn’t the case. So, as you can’t stop someone making an Item, the best
way around this is to have it set that the Workflow Event top line is ‘An
item record is changed’ which is why the ‘blocked’ functionality is so
useful, as that needs to be off to allow transactions. 

Below is how we set up the Workflow to work effectively:

Other Workflow experiments

As a side note, I experimented with Workflows with the type set to
‘Item Approval Workflow’ and an ‘Event’ top Line as ‘Approval of Item
requested’. This didn’t work as I hoped. The reason this caused issues
is that users can bypass conditions by simply not clicking the ‘Request
Approval’ button on the Item Card. If they clicked it, then they would
not be able to transact it. I can change the record but can’t transact it.
However, if I am using an Item which (on the Card) I haven’t clicked
‘Request Approval’, then I can transact freely. With something like this,
it would be unlikely people would remember to press this each time. 

It’s worth noting that for entities with multiple conditions attached, as
soon as one is triggered, regardless of if the second is satisfied, it will
be blocked. Once an item has had an approval request made, it will
need approving prior to further action. For example, imagine a sales
orders which has two approval workflows tied to it. The first condition
may be that anything above the value of £1000 triggers an approval
request. The second condition states that sales orders for Item
‘7500ABC’ require approving. If approval’s required for the Item, then
it’s irrelevant if the order Unit Price is £900, it error regardless. As the
first condition is pending approval, the system won’t let you proceed
further. 

Over-Receipt Codes and Workflows

A short demonstration of Over-Receipt Codes

You can set Workflows for Over-Receipt Codes. In the example above,
we have a Purchase Order Line with an Over-Receipt Code on the Item
Card set to a maximum of 10%. This means, anything over the
Quantity value but within 10% of it in the Qty. to Receive will be
acceptable. So, if the Qty. to Receive was 111, it would error. Below it
lays out the error message: ‘you cannot enter more than 10 in the
Over-Receipt Quantity field’.

Whilst it’s normal to put a reasonable cap on the Over-Receipt Code,

the highest value you could set the Over-Receipt Code value to is
100%. If you set this to the default limit, where you order one item,
you can receive two.

Setting up Over-Receipt Codes is simple. On the Item Card, within the

‘Inventory’ tab, establish the Code and the maximum percentage over
the Quantity you’d be willing to receive. This field allows your
incoming amounts to be over the ordered amount, allowing you to be
flexible where necessary, if approved.

The Over-Receipt Workflow itself

 Let’s look at the format of the Workflow: 

The first Line says that an approval request is created when the
Document (Purchase Order) has a Status of either ‘Open’ or ‘Released’
but only where there’s a Purchase Line with the Over-Receipt Code set
to ‘OVERRCPT10’. The ‘OVERRCPT10’ filter isn’t showing on the
outside but by clicking into the ‘On Condition’ first Line, it would be
visible. 

Notice how there are two lines for approving the approval request.
The first, is if there are no pending approvals, remove the record
restriction. The second says that where there’s more than zero
pending approvals, send an approval request. 

In the first ‘Then Response’ Line, this is what we have: 

In the second Line of the ‘Then Response’ Column, we have a setup
like this: 

This dictates the order of events when removing a restriction. Here, we

remove the prohibition to post the document. Step one is removing
the limitations laid out in the ‘Then Response’ section. Step two
releases the document and finally the Over-Receipt is approved. 

Over-receipt example purchase order

When we create a Purchase Order with an over-receipt, I will input my

quantity. We then release the order and either change the Qty to
Receive or the Over-Receipt Quantity, assuming they fall within the
Over-Receipt Code Quantity that’s applicable to the workflow. We will
then be notified at the top of the order to say there’s an over-receipt
quantity:

At this stage, I can’t post the order:

To resolve this, I must click ‘Request Approval’ and ‘Send Approval

Request’. This will send an approval request to the specified user and
create a record in the Approval Request Entries page.

Finally, make sure the workflow is ‘Enabled’ before using it or else the
rules configured won’t take effect.

Closing remarks
Workflows can seem daunting to implement but once you’re past the
initial setup, it’s plain sailing. If you have any feedback or questions,
please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us. We’d love to hear your
thoughts and ideas as to how we can improve!
One of the key selling points of Business Central is its automation capabilities. Not only does it
have the ability to seamlessly connect to Microsoft Power Automate but it also has built-in
approval process workflow capabilities which you and your team can easily utilise to automate
tedious and time-consuming business processes. In this blog, we take a look at using approval
process workflows in Business Central and how they can add value to your business.

Benefits of using approval process workflows in

Business Central
There are many benefits to using business process automation in Business Central, such as
approval process workflows, in Business Central. Some of these benefits include:

 Increased productivity
  Improved customer service
 Greater compliance
 Reduced costs

Types of process workflows available in

Business Central
One of the most important type of Business Central workflows are approval process workflows.
Which can be easily created to prevent a Purchase Order from posting until someone with the
required authority sanctions the action.

Process workflows can also be created for the approval of sales quotes, orders, invoices and
credit notes, purchase invoices and credit notes, as well as approval workflows for adding or
amending customer, vendors or items details.

Other Business Central workflows that can be set up in Business Central include those for
automatic postings or the automatic creation of lines in general ledger sheets.
Steps for setting up an approval process
workflow in Business Central
When setting up a new approval process workflow in Business Central, there are a number of
steps that need to be taken.

1. Set up the workflow users: Before you can create workflows, you must set up the users that
take part in the workflows. This is done on the Workflow User Group page, where you set up the
user and specify the user’s number in a process sequence. Click here for details of how to set up
a workflow user.

2, Set up the workflow approval users: Now you need to set up the workflow users who are
involved in the approval process. On the Approval User Setup page, you also set up amount
limits for specific types of requests and define a substitute approver to whom approval requests
are delegated when the original approver is absent. Click here for details of how to set up
approval users.

3. Set up workflow notifications: Once the approval users are set up, you must specify how
and when the approval user will be notified. This can be done on the Notification Set up page.

4. Create the workflow: Once all the users are set up and the notification settings set, you are
ready to create the workflow itself. The workflows are created on the Workflow page and are
done by listing the required steps involved in the workflow. Each step consists of a workflow
event moderated by event conditions and a workflow response with response options. You define
workflow steps by filling fields on workflow lines from fixed lists of events and response values.

Workflows can be created by copying the steps from existing workflows that are using the
workflow templates that exist in the generic version of Business Central. Click here for a step-
by-step guide to creating a new workflow.

5. Enable the workflow

Click here for a walkthrough for Setting up and Using a Purchase Approval Workflow. You can
also view a video about setting up a Customer Approval Workflow here.

Business Central and Power Automate

In addition to using Business Central workflows, your Business Central data can also be used as
part of Microsoft Power Automate workflows. Business Central workflows and Power
Automate are two separate workflow systems. However, any workflow template that you create
with Power Automate is added to the list of workflows within Business Central. Click here for a
guide on how to add Business Central as a data source in Power Automate.
Example of how workflows can be managed in the two ways
Example on “Purchase Order Workflow”
Standard Business Central Workflow
With the standard mode
  Create a workflow from a template, modify it \ configure it, activate it

How to do it from Power Automate?

 Remember: you must have a valid account for Power Automate
Purchase Order Approval Workflow in Power Automate
 Create a new Workflow in Power Automate: “Purchase Order Workflow”
You can select a series of ready-made Workflows (other than those created in
Business Central) with the functions that interest us, you can recall them, modify
them, duplicate them, and make them available to the Community (sharing &
publishing).
Check BC connections, Office 365 connections etc., you can launch a Connection
test for each connection element

Example of Power Automate Workflow “Purchase Order Request Approval”

You can copy\duplicate a Workflow
After workflow creation, you can manage it directly from Business Central
 In this case you can see the workflow created in Power Automate

…and now you can see your new Power Automate workflow in BC Workflows List

 “Microsoft Flow” is the source for this workflow
You can open it directly from Workflow list

In addition, you can open and manage all existing Power Automate workflows form “See
My Flows” button.
OTHER POWER AUTOMATE FEATURE: “BUSINESS PROCESS”
It is possible in Power Automate to create real Business Processes, they can also be
managed through APIs, in this way using Common Data Services, it is possible to
map \ extend the Business processes.
Business Process (from Blank)

Business Process Wizard

Business Process Flow structure
 Technology: Stages & Steps
In this post we will go through the different pages and setups that are involved in
the workflows module of Business Central. We will have a basic overview of how
workflows work and their capabilities.

What Is A Business Central Workflow?

A workflow is a tool where you can automate processess within Business Central.
You can build events that will trigger when specific conditions are met. After that,
an action is carried out in response to this event.

What Is A Power Automate Flow?

Note that on top of Business Central workflows we can connect Business Central
and Power Automate to create ‘Flows’. If you haven´t heard about Power Automate
it is an application of the Microsoft Power Platform outside Business Central.

In this post we will focus only on the workflows within Business Central. Just be
aware that Business Central workflows and Power Automate flows are different
things.

You will find that in some places of Business Central, like the customer card, there
are two options in the request approval section. You can tell the difference because
it shows the logo from a Power Automate flow.
If you choose this option a page like the following will open. As you will find, Power
Automate can connect with Microsoft Teams, One Drive, Sharepoint, etc.
If you click on get started you will be redirected to Power Automate to start creating
flows. The interface looks like the following:
Find more information about Power Automate here:

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-au/
As mentioned above, we will focus on Business Central workflows from now on.

Business Central Workflows

When you search for the word ‘Workflow’ you will get this list:
We will take a tour trough the different pages and possibilities that Business Central
offer. There are a few important points you need to understand so you get to know
the tool. Once you start setting up and testing workflows you will find they aren´t
complicated.

We will have a look at this pages:

 Workflows
 Workflow Templates
 Workflow Categories
 Workflow User Groups
 Workflow Step Instances
 Workflow – Table Relations
 Workflow Event Hierarchies
 Workflow Notification Setup
 Flow Entries
 Workflow Event/Response Combinations
Workflows
This is the most common page. It is the list of workflows that we have create in
Business Central. You will see every workflow wether they are active or not.

When you open a workflow card you will find a header with 4 fields. The ‘Code’,
‘Description’, ‘Category’ and the ‘Enabled’ option.

The lines or ‘Workflow Steps’ are:

1. When Event
2. On Condition
3. Then Response
When Event

This is the event that triggers the workflow.

On Condition

Here you can setup the conditions that the workflow has to meet before triggering.
Then Response

Finally, the workflow needs to know what to do when the conditions are met.
In this example when a purchase invoice is released it will post it automatically.
Then, it will create a journal liine with the payment of the invoice. Finally, it will send
a notification.

Workflow Templates
It is a list of templates that Business Central has built in. It will help you create new
workflows. As you can see they are organized in these categories.
Workflow Categories
As we have mentioned in the previous section you can categorize your workflows
with these categories or create new ones.
You can find the category in the workflow card.
Workflow User Groups
The ‘Workflow User Groups’ page is a list of groups you can define in Business
Central. They are usually used for approval workflows.

On the Workflow User Group card you set up users for that group. Then, you can
specify a user number in a process sequence, such as an approver chain.

Workflow Step Instances

When a workflow is triggered you can see the instances running in that moment in
the ‘Workflow Step Instance’ page. They are basically records of the workflow steps.

Archived Workflow Step Instances. In this page you can see all the step instances
archived in Business Central along with more information about the workflow´s
action.

Workflow – Table Relations

Specifies values on related tables that are used in the workflows. This table can be
used to setup custom events and responses. For other purposes you won´t need to
access this table.
For more information about how to create new workflow events and responses
check the link below:

Walkthrough: Implementing New Workflow Events and Responses – Dynamics NAV

| Microsoft Docs

Workflow Event Hierarchies

In this matrix both the vertical axis and the horizontal axes show workflow events.

Cells with check marks indicate that the event in question can only be used after
the specified preceding events. Cells without check marks, for instance, indicate
that the events in question cannot be used after any event.

In this example, when we click on ‘A purchase invoice is posted’ it opens the list of
events available for ‘A purchase document is released’. That is, the preceding event.
All the events for ‘A purchase document is released’ will be checked on this list:

Workflow Notification Setup

In this page you can define the type of notification the workflows will send to the
users. It can be via Email or an intenral note.
An Email notification will look similiar to this one:

And an internal note can be accessed via the ‘Sent Notification Entries’ page:
Flow Entries
When you look for the word ‘Workflows’ this page will also appear in the search.
However, the table of this page is called ‘Workflow Webhook Entry’.

Entries related to webhooks means that they come from other application such as
Power Automate. You can learn more about webhooks in the following links.

How to test Business Central webhooks

Webhooks with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Workflow Event/Response Combinations

It is a matrix of possible event/responses. For every event in the workflow you can
define multiple responses:

This is an example where you can see the events for a purchase workflow:
And their responses:
These are all the responses available for the event ‘A purchase document is
released’:

Notice that in this screenshot you will find that every response above is checked in
the ‘Workflow Event/Response Combinations’ page.
Approval Workflows
One of the most popular usages of workflows are approvals. We can create
workflows to setup approvals in Business Central.

Approval workflows are a little more complex than other type of workflows. For
further detail, check this dedicated article to approval workflows.

In this post we will go through the different pages in the approval workflow module
of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. With an example of a sales invoice
workflow we will learn how to setup, send and accept an approval request.

 What Is An Approval Workflow?

 Approval User Setup
 Approval Workflow Example
 Requests To Approve
 Approval Entries
 Approval Request Entries
  Send Overdue Approval Notifications
 Posted Approval Entries

Check the post about workflows to have a better understanding about them before
digging into approval workflows.

What Is An Approval Workflow?

An approval workflow is the way we can automate approval processes within
Business Central. Starting from approval users we can decide who needs to
approve a document in order to continue the process that we have stablished. We
can also create notifications and send overdue requests to remind approvers that
an action is needed from them.
Approval User Setup
The fist thing we need to do in order to setup an approval workflow is to fill the
‘Approval User Setup’ page. This is the most important page in the approvals
module of Business Central. All approval workflows will rely on it.

Here we have to setup all the people involved in any approval workflow. There are
different fields for different purposes. Get more information about each one of
them here:

Set Up Approval Users – Business Central | Microsoft Docs

Note that the table is the same as in the user setup page (Table 91 User Setup). So
they share some fields as the e-mail, phone no. or Salesporson/Purch.

For this simple test we will use the following configuration.

Approval Workflow Example

Let´s follow a simple example to explain how an approval workflow works. We will
use the Sales Invoice Approval template.

Sales Approval Workflow

The workflow is the following:

As we can see, there is one main event which is the one that creates the request
and initiates the workflow. For the rest of events to trigger the first one has to be
triggered first. In other words, none of the events indented below the first one will
trigger if the first one isn´t initiated. This is the purpose of indatating events.

On top of the ‘parent’ event, the conditions of the events must also be met. On this
section we can play with the conditions to conform our workflow.
A workflow response can have multiple steps itself. Each one of the responses can
be customized.

The first response in this workflow is ‘Add record restriction’. It shows this caption
because it is the first step in the response. As you can see there are three more:

‘Add record restriction’ means that, in this case, the sales invoice can´t be posted
until the restriction is removed. Learn more about restricted records here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/across-how-to-
restrict-and-allow-usage-of-a-record

If the approval request is approved we can see that the first step is to remove the
record restriction and then release the document.
Trigger The Workflow

We can create now a sales invoice to test the approval workflow. First you can show
the approval factbox to see the status of the approval.
Once we have the invoice ready we can send the approval request.

The status on the document changes to ‘Pending Approval’ and we can see the
information of the approval on the factbox we just populated.

Requests to Approve
You can find pending approvals from the cues of the role center or just by
searching ‘Requests to Approve’. Is in this page where the approver will have to
accept or reject the requests that has received.
The following page will open with information about the approval, sender, due
date, amount and currency code. You can also see if there is any comment related
to the approval.

At this point we can go to the document with the ‘Open Record’ action to verify the
information about the approval. We can approve, reject or delegate it. If we
approve, the status of the document turns to ‘Released’.

But if we reject it, the status will turn to open meaning that this document has been
rejected and can´t be posted. We can also delegate and the status will remain in
‘Pending Approval’ until somebody accepts or rejects.

Let´s approve the invoice in the example. This is now the status.
Approval Entries
This page will show all the entries of the approval module that are on the fly. Each
user can only see their approval entries. The only one that has access to all the
entries is the approval administrator which is defined in the ‘Approval User Setup’.

Approval Request Entries

It basically displays the same information as the ‘Approval Entries’ page. It is also
filtered for each user so they can only see their approvals.
Send Overdue Approval Notifications
When an approval doesn´t recieve a response from the approver we can send
overdue approval notifications with the following option:

If we try to select it a message will pop up:

This means the we need to setup a specific workflow to send overdue approvals.
You can already find a template for this task:

Once we enable it, we can see on our approval entries which ones are overdue.

If we now try to run the task again this message will appear notifying that overdue
approval entries have been created:
Check the ‘Overdue Approval Entries’ page. We can see that both overdue
approvals have been created.

You can choose the notification method in the ‘Workflow Notification Setup’ page:

Posted Approval Entries

When you post a document that has been approved the approval entries will move
from ‘Approval Entries’ to the ‘Posted Approval Entries’ page.
That´s all the basics you need to know about approval workflows. Note that
approvals can have a lot more possibilities like chain approvals, specific approvers,
etc.