Before we start workflows running, we need to make sure that workflow processor is up and running so that it is able to move workflows from stage to stage. If you are running in a development environment, a simple way to do this is to use the tutorial_workflowprocessor which you can find hidden away in AOT. This allows you to start and stop the workflow processor on demand.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

How to do it…

To access and start the tutorial version of the Workflow Processor, follow these steps:

1. Open up the AOT explorer and expand the Forms node. Find the Tutorial_WorkflowProcessor form, right-mouse-click on it and select the Open menu item.
   
2. When the workflow processor dialog box is displayed, click the Start button.
   

How it Works…

Now as long as you have the processor running, it will automatically process any workflow steps that are in the queue.

The final update that we need to do on our workflow type is to add some code top the Approval Handler to tell the workflow what to do when the workflow completes.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

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The default labels that are generated by the Workflow Wizard for the submission menu items are a little generic, so it is a good idea to just fix the labels so that they look more appealing to the user.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

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By default, the submission method that is created by the Workflow Wizard is empty, so we need to add a little bit of code to tell the system what to do when the user clicks on the Submit button to initiate the workflows.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

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In order for the workflow controls to show up on the forms, you need to enable them to be used by workflows, and also associate the default workflow type to the form. This stops workflow management steps from showing up randomly on forms, and also allows you to control who is able to act upon workflows.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

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The state of any of the workflows will be tracked through an enumeration field, which allows you to assign any number of values to segregate out the different processes.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

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Now that we have the editor in the right place, we can start building our framework for the workflows themselves. The first step is to create a Workflow Category to store all of our new workflows against.

NOTE: This is part of the Developing a Product Approval Workflow in Dynamics AX 2012 blog series where we show how to develop a completely new workflow to manage the new product approval process. If you want to see all of the other posts in this series, click here.

Read More