Microsoft® Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible

Chapter 18. Automating Your Organization with Processes

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Designing processes

• Working with workflows

• Working with dialogs

Organizations constantly struggle with streamlining, standardizing, and automating their processes. Although organizational leaders understand that process automation results in lowering costs, improving service, and accelerating workplace productivity, they lack the appropriate tools to make this a reality. This is particularly true of large enterprises with many employees and complex processes. As a result, processes are often managed in Excel spreadsheets, documents shared through e-mail, sticky notes, or, in some cases, are passed along only through word-of-mouth. Process automation is a struggle because it typically involves writing computer code. Because processes are complex and change frequently, computer code can become time-consuming and expensive to maintain.

Dynamics CRM includes a flexible set of process automation tools and an engine to constantly monitor and run processes in the background. Dynamics CRM processes support the concept of "programming without coding." As you work with processes in Dynamics CRM, you'll be surprised at the rules, alerts, scripts, and other automation that can be created by nondevelopers. On those occasions where the available process tools do not fully support your needs, you still have the option of using computer code for just the steps of the process that require this extra flexibility.

Understanding Processes ...