Setting up automatic business process transition with process stage field

One common requirement your client might ask for, is that a business process flow will automatically move to the next stage when certain conditions are met. Additionally, they might ask for the ability to see what stage a record is in from the view, or you might want to base your own logic on what stage a record is on.

This can be achieved by adding 2 fields and 2 classic workflows.

For this example, we will call our record "Opportunity" and our business process flow "BPF".

Step 1: Creating the fields

On the Opportunity, add a single line text field called "Process Stage" and a lookup field (in this case) called "BPF" to the BPF entity. These fields do not need to be put onto the form, however you might like to put the Process Stage field into the required views.

Step 2: Adding the first classic workflow

This workflow must run on the BPF entity, and run when the BPF record is created or the process is applied.

Create a step to update the Opportunity, and set the BPF lookup field to "BPF" (the BPF record).

Step 3: Adding the second classic workflow

This workflow should run on the Opportunity and most likely run as a real time workflow (synchronous). It should be triggered whenever any field that is part of a "Stage Move" condition is changed.

If you have the specified conditions for moving to a stage, perhaps begin with nested conditions, for example:

Status = Active

{Stage Move Conditions}

{Action}

{Action}

{Stage Move Conditions} 

          {Action}

{Action}

Important: To prevent your workflow from moving to any stage in the BPF if trigger fields are changed downstream, you should specify within each condition that the BPF - Active Stage = {the stage you want to move from}

This first action is to update the BPF record through that populated lookup field to BPF. Set the Active Stage field to the next stage in the business process flow. The second action should then be to update the Opportunity to set the Process Stage field to the BPF's "Active Stage - Stage Category".

Now your business process flow will move to the next stage whenever the correct conditions are met.