Dynamics CRM Development: Tips and Tricks – Calling a Workflow from Ribbon Button

There are a lot of quick ways of doing things in Dynamics CRM but developers struggle in finding how. Today I am going to explain how to call a workflow on a custom ribbon button.

Let’s say you have a situation, where you want to perform some operation on customribbon button on “click event”. Let us take an example. I have a button on OPPORTUNITY form called‘ConfirmRequest ’. On the click event of this button I have to generate an ORDERandalso want to send an email. The best way to achieve this is by creating a workflow. Butthe issue is, how to call workflow on the button click.

There are many solutions posted on the web, that involve using JavaScript, web resources etc. however there is a much easier way that requires no coding.

For this we use Ribbon Workbench. The same can be downloaded from the link https://www.develop1.net/public/Download%20Ribbon%20Workbench%202013.aspx. Download and install the solution in your CRM instance.

Here are the steps to follow:

Create a workflow, for example – I created a workflow called Generate Order from Opportunity.
Extract the GUID of this workflow with the help of advanced find. Here is how you do it:
Open advanced find window
Look for processes and search for your workflow name
Export to Excel and extract the GUID of the proceed from the column A called (Do Not Modify)Process
Load the new solution into the Ribbon Workbench with OPPORTUNITY entity.
Expand the commands, “Solution Elements” tab.
- Right-click on the Command of the custom button that you want to use. Example ‘CCSDP.opportunity.GenerateOrder.Command’ and select ‘Edit Actions’.
- Click on OK. And publish it.The workflow will start getting called from the click of the custom button.