How to Create a Business Process Flow with Project for the Web
A project methodology is a crucial component of understanding the steps required for a project request to flow through an organizations project approval process. In Project for the Web a business process flow is how we can represent a projects stages in the tool.
Interestingly, a business process flow is also used in Dynamics 365 CRM to represent a sales process of an organization. Noting the entry of a sales lead through the actual win.
From a tactical perspective, the timeline view (Gantt chart), board view, and grid view provide project managers several different ways in which to view a project plan in the solution. A business process flow is typically the mechanism that starts a project in the first place.
In Dynamics 365, business process flows are representations of your business process displayed in Dynamics 365 (Project for the Web) as a heading across the top of an entity form. A business process flow is comprised of stages, and within each stage there are stage steps that determine what fields are to be completed. Many times a process flow diagram documents the BPF to be created in the solution.
In this video we walk through a series of steps:
Create Project entity fields
We first will create a series of project entity fields that will be used to capture project information. The information will be text, option set and currency data types.
Those familiar with Microsoft Project Online will most closely associate Project entity fields with custom fields and lookup tables in Project Online.
Custom entities such as fields are critical when it comes to custom reporting that is meaningful to a specific organization. Fields can be related to a project charter you may use today. Electronically capturing these fields allow streamlined reporting.
Edit the Project entity Information form
We need to place the fields we created in step 1 on the Project information form in order to input and display the data. Therefore in this step we will open the form for editing, and place fields on the existing Summary tab. Also performed in this step, we will create an additional tab named Project Closeout, and place two new entity fields on this tab used to capture data related to the completion of the project.
Create a Business Process Flow
Using the Business Process Flow designer, we will create a Business Process flow to represent the stages our projects will follow as part of our project methodology. The stages are
- 01 - Initiation
- 02 - Planning
- 03 - Execution
- 04 - Close
We will create the stages, and in each stage we will add data steps to detail what fields require entry in order to exit out of one stage and enter another.
Finally, we will test the business process flow to ensure it functions as designed.
We hope you enjoy this video!
Project for the Web is all new, browser-only app designed to work seamlessly with the Microsoft Teams & Dynamics tools. Since the solution is web based in the Microsoft Cloud, project managers, sponsors and participants only need a web browser to begin to collaborate with project teams and contribute on projects immediately.
The new service for occasional or part-time project managers and self-directed work teams is intuitive like Planner, flexible and fast like Excel, and embedded with MS-Project’s rich scheduling functionality. Since, it’s build on Microsoft’s Power Platform, non-developers can leverage Power BI, Power Apps, Flow and Common Data Service, giving Project for Web wide flexibility.
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