Dynamics CRM 2011 Online – Custom Workflow Activities!

Roshan Mehta, 21 February 2013

The ability to create custom workflow activities and register them with CRM 2011 online has been a feature not previously supported in CRM due to security limitations. The release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR12 (Polaris) provides the ability for developers to write custom workflow activities and register them in the sandbox with CRM 2011 online, making the platform more powerful than ever.

Like plug-ins, we register the workflow assembly using the Plugin Registration Tool as shown in the screenshot below. I have first established a connection with an instance of Dynamics CRM 2011 running in the cloud.

Once we have registered the assembly, the custom workflow activity can then be used when adding a step to a workflow process in CRM online.

My custom workflow activity has an OutArgument defined which can then be referenced in steps following our custom step. In the screenshot below, I have populated the To field of a “Create Email” step with an EntityReference of a system user.

There you have it! Developers can now take advantage of custom workflow activities in the cloud with Dynamics CRM 2011 UR12.