Dynamics Workflows Replacements Best Practice

[DMasters]

Hi

I am customizing a Dynamics 365 instance (previously only ever worked on premise) and have found many warnings telling me to replace background flows with MS flow instead. Flow loos good, but i'm struggling to see the diret replacement for Service Account, Systems level workflows.

How do I create a set of universal Business Flows that do not use a personal Data Connection and apply to all users in a company?

So far, I have found options for 'Team Ownership' but this doesnt gets into messy situations where users can edit a high privilege flow.

Ive also read about people using Service Accounts, but they would also get access to that users data connection which would give them access to far more than their role if they just edit the flow.

I think I can also create a group that contains all employees, but this becomes another thing to manage when creating users and could easily be forgetten which I would want to avoid as these flows are business critical.

Flow seems great for a user experience, but i can't find any documentation on Business Management for them? 

Thanks in advance for your help

[LeeHarris]

Hi @DMasters 

Have you looked at using Solution aware Flows (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/create-flow-solution)? Essentially this is a way of adding a Flow to a standard Dynamics 365 solution. You can access solutions for your environment using the new interface at make.powerapps.com. If you then view your solution in the legacy interface within D365 you will notice your Flows appear in the list of Processes as "Modern Flow".

When creating Flows in a solution you will have access to the CDS connector for the current environment. You can then deploy your Flows as part of the solution in the same way that you would deploy a workflow.

The only thing that you currently can't do with Flow that a workflow does allow, is to run a real-time process. Only background workflows can be replaced with Flows.

[DMasters]

Thanks for this @LeeHarris! Solution Aware flows certainly seems like its the direction i'm looking for.

To check though, this will trigger for all users, but in the context of the flow creator? So, if i create a workflow that triggers on record create, this will trigger for all users using which users data connection? Im trying to understand the impact on users access to areas of the system that they might not normally have access to, as well as the cost of the triggers from flow.

Also, why would I use  CDS connection rather than the built in Dynamics one for this style of solution management? 

Thanks for your help!

[LeeHarris]

Hi @DMasters 

The Flow will trigger as the user that created the Flow and will use the connections defined within each action. This is similar to how the background workflows run within Dynamics, running as the user that created them rather than the user that performed the triggering action.

The new solution interface at make.powerapps.com will eventually replace the one you are used to within Dynamics so a lot of the functionality is being ported over to it, with certain actions such as solution aware Flows only being available in the new UI. CDS, or the Common Data Service, is the framework in which Dynamics 365 now sits. Essentially D365 is a pre built app on the CDS and when you add customisations you are now customising the CDS. This means that all your data can be harnessed in multiple places much more easily, via Flow, PowerApps, or PowerBI. It's also worth noting that the Dynamics 365 connector within Flow is now deprecated and you should be using the CDS connector for all new Flows. The CDS connector will give you access to the exact same entities, fields, and functionality as the D365 connector, with some additional performance improvements.

Hope that helps.