Since the new unified interface the word ‘Flow’ is popping up more and more in D365. In the new Unified Interface you will have seen that running workflows moved to the ‘flow’ icon
https://www.isc-software.com/news/dynamics-365-where-did-workflow-go
Now, when you try to create a new background process you get the yellow warning prompt to use a flow instead. Now as a self titled geek I want to try anything ‘new’ but, there was a little warning bell in my head on licenses.
As with most things there are costs attached and flow is no different. There are not only different license costs relating to the price / amount of flows you can do but also there is the speed that these are executed. If you search there are many articles on license but I have been looking at this;
https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/?currency=GBP
Money is one thing but the speed to me is the major thing you need to look at BEFORE switching your background Workflow to a Flow. Depending on your license you will be looking at 1 – 5 minutes for execution and there are caps on the amount of executions of the flow.
The good news on the volume is that although it is shown as a user amount, that is actually shared with the entire organisation so if you are 2,000 a user and you have 20 users as an organisation that is 40,000 a month shared between everyone.
It does make you stop and think though. I am a fan of child workflows. The benefit I have always found is that you can easily change items in a child and potentially test in a silo basis rather than if you have a long Workflow with 10 stages, changing one little items may break the entire workflow. This is horse for courses and we will all have our preferred method of creation but, now that you are limited per execution my single workflow with maybe 3 child workflows would now be classed as 4 workflows.
Lets add to this, if it was an on field change workflow there is potentially a condition as the first line to either stop or continue. How often is that running and classed as an execution? If it is a workflow on change of Status reason, again how many stages do you go through and how many executions will that take out of your allowance.
You will have seen that I do like new features (I have written enough about the new make.powerapps.com but, i’m almost scared to try this one. Scared because I may love it and want to use it all the time but, will my customers license support it as the best method? It isn’t always about the technology its the correct match.
So for now I am resisting the lure of the yellow banner but I feel it wont be for much longer 🙂
If you have clicked and started using flow how does it compare to workflows? Are you liking it? What are the pros / cons?
I’d be interested in your thoughts and, if i’m worrying unnecessarily on the volume side that’s great 🙂
