From the Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM blogs: External scheduler; Reset CRM version; Ownership records; Creating a trial

In this week's Microsoft Dynamics CRM/365 blog review:

• Using an external scheduler to run on demand workflows
• How to reset to a different CRM version in Microsoft Dynamics 365
• How to change ownership records in Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM
• Trial & error: understanding Dynamics 365 CE trials

Using an external scheduler to run on demand workflows

On the PowerObjects blog, Joe D365 stated that workflows are valuable tools within Dynamics 365-powerful and easy to configure at the same time. Users may sometimes need to schedule workflows to run at a certain time or to introduce a wait time between workflow steps, he stated.

An example of this would be if we needed to initiate a workflow to notify clients when Contract Renewal Dates become current. If these dates are spread in the future from 1 day to 5 years, you will have to cover all that time by checking frequently when a Renewal Date becomes current (equals today, or one week on the past).

There are two out-of-the-box options that can be used to accomplish this: adding process timeouts to trigger functionality using time or date dependent conditions or using wait conditions to trigger the workflow on a field change. The problem is that both options can be expensive on system resources.

But there's another solution using an external scheduler that doesn't involve extra overhead, Joe stated.

You can read about it here.

How to reset to a different CRM version in Microsoft Dynamics 365

On the Magnetism blog, Dominic Jarvis explains that users who created a new Microsoft Dynamics instance recently may have noticed that the ...