Automating Business Process Flow Stage Transition with Power Automate

 Automating Business Process Flow Stage Transition with Power Automate

Business Process Flows (BPFs) in Power Platform provide a visual guide to users as they navigate through various stages in a process. Automating the transition between these stages based on external events, such as an approval, can streamline and enhance your business processes. In this blog post, we'll walk through a Power Automate flow designed to achieve this, step by step.

Scenario Overview

Our scenario involves triggering a stage transition in a BPF when a specific condition is met. This condition is based on the outcome of an approval process. 

Step-by-Step Explanation

Step 1: Trigger

The flow starts when a row is added, modified, or deleted in a CDS entity. The trigger is configured to listen for changes in the 'new_request' entity, specifically when the 'statuscode' equals 1 (assuming '1' represents a pending status).

Step 2: Get User Record to send the Request

The flow retrieves the details of the user associated with the record triggering the flow. This is achieved by making a connection to the 'systemusers' entity in CDS and using the user's ID from the triggering record.

Step 3: Start and Wait for an Approval

An approval process is initiated using the 'shared_approvals' connection. The details of the approval include the title (subject of the record triggering the flow), assigned user (from Step 2), and notification settings.

Step 4: Condition

A conditional check is applied to determine the outcome of the approval. If the outcome is 'Approve,' the flow proceeds to update the BPF stage; otherwise, it handles the rejection case.

Step 5: Update BPF Stage (Approve)

If the approval outcome is 'Approve,' the flow updates the record status by making a connection to the 'new_requests' entity and setting the 'statecode' to 1 (assuming '1' represents an active state) and 'statuscode' to 2.

Step 6: Update BPF Stage (Reject)

In the case of rejection, the flow updates the record status by setting the 'statecode' to 1 and 'statuscode' to a custom rejection status code (e.g., '100000001').

Step 7: Get Current Instance ID

This step retrieves the current instance ID of the BPF associated with the triggering record. It connects to the 'new_requesttovacancy' entity and filters based on the 'new_request' from the triggering record.

Formula: 

outputs('get_CurrentInstanceId')?['body/value']?[0]?['businessprocessflowinstanceid']

Step 8: Get Next Stage ID by Using Stage Name

The flow retrieves the process stage ID of the next stage in the BPF named 'Vacancy.' It queries the 'processstages' entity to find the stage with the specified name.

Step 9-10: Compose Active and Next Stage ID

Compose actions are used to create variables for the active stage ID and the next stage ID using the outputs from the previous steps.

Active Stage Formula: 

outputs('get_CurrentInstanceId')?['body/value']?[0]?['_activestageid_value']

Next Stage Formula: 

outputs('get_NextStageId_by_using_Stage_Name')?['body/value']?[0]?['processstageid']

Step 11: Update BPF Record Accordingly

This step updates the 'new_requesttovacancy' entity with the new active stage ID, related 

Parameters:

1. Entity Name: new_requesttovacancy
• The target entity in which the record will be updated.
• This is the BPF Table Name
2. Record ID:
• The specific record ID to be updated is dynamically retrieved from the output of a previous step (get_CurrentInstanceId).
• This is the Current Instance ID
3. Active Stage ID:
• The new active stage ID is retrieved using the output from a previous step (get_NextStageId_by_using_Stage_Name) and is bound to the 'processstages' entity.
• Formula: outputs('get_NextStageId_by_using_Stage_Name')?['body/value']?[0]?['processstageid']

4. BPF Request ID:
• The recruitment requisition ID is obtained from the trigger outputs and is used to bind the record in the 'new_request' entity.
5. Traversed Path:
• The traversed path is constructed using the active stage ID and next stage ID obtained from previous steps.

 

Step 7: Add a New Row: Adding Notes to Timeline (Optional)

Irrespective of the approval outcome, a note is added to the timeline using the 'annotations' entity in CDS. The note includes details about the subject, approval comments, and the user who initiated the approval.