In this article, we are going to understand what Business Process flow is, how to create it, why do we need it, how it is related to Power Apps. Let’s go into detail.

What is Business Process Flow?

Definition: We plan or design a sequence of activities to complete something important and valuable, which is called Business Process Flow.

I know it is a bit complicated because it is a theoretical definition. Let’s understand from an example.

Business Process Flow Example

• Refer to the screenshot below.
• The example we have taken is of a placement process.

1. At the first stage, the flow is assigned to the Level 1 interviewer. Level 1 interviewer has 3 tasks. The interviewer will provide the data like,
• Practical Test Done? – Yes or No
• Practical test marks – Enter the Test marks
• Good for Next round? – Yes or No
2. When the interviewer approves stage 1, Microsoft Flow goes to level 2. Here, 3 tasks are for the Level 2 interview Panel.
• Technical discussion? – Yes or No
• Rating on skillset – Enter the rating of the candidate based on skillset
• Good for the HR round? – Yes or No
3. Then interviewer or owner of the step approves or reject the application
4. Then flow goes to the final stage - the HR interview stage if the Level 2 panel approves the candidate. 3 tasks for HR Panel
• Salary discussion – Enter the expected Salary
• Joining Period – Enter the number of days within which the candidate can join the company
• Recruited? – Yes or No
5. Finally, after HR approves, the flow or the process ends.
• Here, the resource who is working at each level is having different skill sets.
• Each resource works to complete his/her set of activities and eventually complete the entire Business Process Flow.
• The good thing about Business Process Flow is, you can see at which stage the process has reached.

How to create Business Process Flow in PowerApps

Requirement: We are going to implement the same Business Process Flow mentioned above

1. Business Process Flow started once there is an entry in CDS. You can add an entry in CDS using Power Automate or using a canvas app also.
2. We will manually add an entry to CDS and will get started. Remember: Actual business scenarios will be much more complex than this example.
3. CDS Entity – PlacementProcess

4. Let’s start creating Business Process Flow.
5. Go to the Power Automate platform.
6. Click on Business Process Flow under My Flows. After that click on New.

7. Give,
   • Flow Name
   • The Name will be taken by default, you can change that also
   • Choose an entity – Select the entity that you have already created. As mentioned earlier, you need to create an entity first in CDS.
   
8. When you click on Create, you will get redirected to Business Process flow.

9. As shown in the screenshot below,
   • On Flow, you can add
     • Stage
     • Condition
   • On Composition, you can add,
     • Data step
     • Workflow
     • Action Step
     • Flow Step
     

NOTE:

• You can have a maximum of 30 stages per Business Process Flow.
• In the single Business Process Flow, you can work with 5 different entities, and still, the user doesn’t need to think about the entity he should work on.
• You can have up to 10 active Business Process Flows per entity.
• If you have multiple Flows, you can control which Business Process Flow will be the default.
• You can link your Business Process Flow with security roles so that only the people related to that business process will have access to it.
10. Here, we want to update the first stage (L1 Process) with 3 fields so we will add 3 Data steps as shown below.

11. Now, we will add a condition after the first stage to check if the candidate is good for the next round. Here, you can see we have added two stages after the condition. One for the if part of the condition and the other for the else part.

12. Now we will add L2 and HR stages as well based on our design.

13. Once you are done with updating your Business Process flow, click on Activate.

Test Business Process Flow

We are directly adding a record in CDS to start the Business Process Flow, but you can apply your logic to add an entry in the CDS entity.

1. Go to CDS and click on your Entity – Here, PlacementProcess.
2. Click on Data and Add a Record.

3. This is how the Business Process Flow looks when we are in between the stages.

4. As mentioned in the screenshot, each stage assigned resource needs to fill the data, and then the flow moves to the next stage. We can also see the current stage of the flow.

Why use business Process Flow

1. When you have defined a set of tasks for different people in your organization, you can work with Business Process Flow.
2. The visual display of the steps indicates exactly where they are in the current process flow.
3. No need for training because the user doesn’t need to worry about which entity, he/she should be using.