Scheduled Tasks/plugin on CRM 4.0

Question

Is it possible to schedule pulgin on CRM.

I ‘m trying to create a reminder task activity for an opportunity entity if no there has been no activities in the last week. I would like this to run every week.

Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

Though there is no such thing as a recurring workflow in Dynamics CRM, you can simulate this behaviour by creating a Workflow Rule that

1. Gets fired upon creation of the record
2. Checks a condition
3. Conditionally does something
4. Waits for n days/hours/minutes
5. Calls itself again

Don't forget to mark the rule as "Run as a child workflow".

Answer 2

I think perhaps a better approach would be to build that functionality into a workflow? I have not been doing much CRM lately, but I have implemented what you described, in Crm 1.2 back in the day. This turned out to be very useful for reporting as well, pulling reports of what sales staff makes it a habit to not follow up on opportunities.

Best Regards Rihan

Answer 3

I would recommend to utilize SQL Server Scheduled Job. Although workflow can be used for this problem, but waiting-state-workflow is considered application consuming.

The reason is because the waiting-state-workflow is held in the memory, and it needs to be validated against certain timing condition periodically. In your case, it needs to periodically calculated whether it has exceed one week or not, and if it's yes, it will upload the waiting-state-workflow from the database to be executed.

Regards,

hadi