Unable to select an option from “Start when” dropdown on CRM 2013 Workflows

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Posted on by Karth

I’m currently using the trial version of CRM 2013 Online. I’m trying to configure a Real Time Workflow to run just like a PreCreate event. The “Start when” dropdown is disabled and I’m unable to select the ‘Before’ option from the dropdown. Any thoughts as to why this is disabled?

Some information on the Process

Type of Process : Real Time Workflow

Scope : User

Start When : Disabled and ‘Record is created’ checkbox is ticked.

Execute as : User who made changes to the workflow

Thanks,

Karth

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jlattimer 24,562 on at

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You aren't able to run the workflow prior to a record being created - much like you can't run a real time workflow after a record has been deleted. This would appear to be by design.

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PS 23,577 on at

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Hi Karth,

It is by design and logical too. Your workflow will work only when your record is created thats why dropdown is freezed to "After" and similarly your workflow will be before you have deleted it , thats why "Before" is freezed for record is deleted.

So thats a design which is very logical.

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Anjali Raj on at

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Hi Karth,

As Jason and Prashant informed it is by-design and logical too.

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John E. Bailey 455 on at

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Everyone appears to be pulling the party line here, but tell me this, if you can never select anything but After why show a drop down here at all? Obviously at some point there were plans for another option to be available.

Also, I disagree that you should not be able to run the workflow before item creation. If you are going to validate the item with a workflow and use the stop workflow to prevent the item from being created if it fails validation, then you would want to execute before the item is created. This is one of the scenarios the pre-create plugin stage is used for and this was available during the CRM 20113 beta for real time workflows (see blog here if you do not believe me www.salentica.com/crm-2013-real-time-workflows).

This does not appear to be as much by design as a feature dropped by RTM, and it absolutely is not logical to leave this out. Applying logic to validate before creating records is a common use case and would be a nice addition to real time workflows. It would not surprise me if this comes back in a rollup later.

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Dave Ireland on at

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I'm with you John - I wrote the article you referenced above and haven't looked at real-time workflows since then. Today a colleague asked me how I managed to get that option enabled, and I was floored that it was no longer available.

If the goal of real-time workflows was to eliminate the need to so many plugin assemblies, then I feel the product team bailed on a really nice option here. Being able to validate data input and disallow the creation of the new record has the potential to really help with achieving clean data in CRM - something every organization struggles with.

Hope the product team reconsiders. For now, it's back to JavaScript and .net plugins I suppose...

Dave

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