How to provide an on demand FLOW for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement users and its licensing implications

We are often facing requirements like "the user must be able to create a copy of the record with the click on a button". Previously we mostly used on demand workflows but time is changing.

Recently I had the requirement to provide the users an easy way for copying an opportunity within CRM. Additionally, the users want to maintain the topic of the new opportunity before the copy is created. Of course, we could discuss the requirement but I accepted the challenge and started thinking about it.

In former times we used dialogues to provide this kind of feature. After deprecation of dialogues and as they are not available anymore in Unified Interface they are not an option. As an alternative, we could use an on-demand workflow but wouldn't be able to provide an easy way for maintaining the new topic before the copy is created.

Nowadays we have FLOW, a feature which is becoming more and more important in our implementations and it can cover requirements as described above.

FLOW design

Below is shown the on demand FLOW design. As you can see I used the CDS trigger "When a record is selected". I added an input parameter "New topic" as a text field. It provides the user with the possibility to maintain the topic for the new opportunity.

Afterward I "get a record", the opportunity to be copied. From my point of view this should not be necessary as all data I need already provided by the triggerbody "When a record is selected". Unfortunately my new opportunity would be empty so I use "get a record" to retrieve the opportunity details I need to create the copy.

How does it look like in CRM?

Click on the picture above to see the whole behavior in an animated gif.

Anything to consider in regard to licensing?

There are some important things to consider when using this approach.

1. When you use FLOWs based on CDS triggers like "When a record is created" or "When a record is updated" then only the FLOW owner needs to have a license which covers the premium connector CDS.
2. When using the CDS trigger "When a record is selected" every user who should be able to invoke this FLOW needs a license which covers this premium connector.
3. The Dynamics 365 connector does not offer a trigger "When a record is selected" so it is no alternative.
4. When you have "D365 Customer Enagement Plan" licenses then it is quite easy. This license also brings the proper licenses for FLOW and Powerapps to use the premium connectors.

5. When you only have the Microsoft Flow Free license you most likely need to identify another approach for covering the requirement.