In the previous post, I walked through the ABP Target Records Scenario. In this post, I’ll go through the Aggregative Query Scenario.
Prerequisites
1. Download the Asynchronous Batch Process Solution, import into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 on-premise/Online organization
2. Go to Settings – > Solutions and Open the ABP solution. Go to the Batch Process entity definition and check the Settings checkbox in the ‘Areas that display this entity’ section
3. Save and publish the solution
As always, I advise against publishing any external solution on your production environment without testing it first.
Aggregative Query Scenario
This scenario describes a scheduled aggregative calculation on Microsoft Dynamics CRM records, followed by performing some business logic operation with the calculation result. Due to the aggregative calculation result nature, the business logic operation is usually an email notification or record creation/update.
Note that grouping is unsupported by this version of the ABP.
Some sample business requirements of this type:
- Send daily email message to Service Manager with total number of daily resolved cases
- Each month, create a Note for each Sales Person user, recording total estimated revenue of opened Opportunities
- Send monthly report to an external application with sum of total closed Orders
Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to define aggregative queries using the Advanced Find editor, but there are useful tools such as FetchXMLBuilder (part of the XRMToolBox suite) that can help you define FetchXML syntax for such queries.
Also, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK contains useful samples for aggregative queries which can be easily tweaked to suit your purpose.
Following are the steps to implement the daily resolved cases requirement:
1. Create a new Action targeting ‘None (global)’ and name it ‘Send daily resolved cases total notification’
2. Uncheck all ‘Start when’ trigger checkboxes to prevent automatic triggering of the process
3. Add an input parameter of type string named aggregationResult. This specific name is critical for for the ABP operation.
4. Add a step to send an email notification to the Service Manager, including the required text embedding the aggregationResult parameter value
5. Save and activate the process
6. Define aggregative query. I used the FetchXMLBuilder too available in the XRMToolBox suite and copy the query text to the clipboard
7. Create a new Batch Process record (Settings –> Batch Processes)
8. Paste the aggregative FetchXML query into the Target Records field. Note that the alias is used as as part of the aggregation result, so a meaningful name is preferred
9. Name the Batch Process: ‘Daily resolved cases total notification’ (or other meaningful name)
10. Set the Activation Frequency to ‘Daily’
11. Set the Process field value to ‘Send daily resolved cases total notification’ process
12. Set the Next Activation to any future date and time. I suggest selecting the application’s least busy time
13. Set the Status Reason to ‘Scheduled’
14. Click Save to schedule the Batch Process
You are done! The Batch Process is set and waiting for the next activation date and time. If all goes well, an email notification will be sent as defined and the Batch Process will reschedule to the same time next day.
If you would like to deactivate the Batch Process scheduling, change the Status Reason value to ‘Suspended’ and save. Since there may already be a Workflow instance scheduled and waiting, go to the Background Processes for the Batch Process record and cancel waiting instances.
This also applies if you change the Next Activation date/time once the Batch Process record is already created and scheduled.
In the next post, I’ll walkthrough the External Action scenario. Stay tuned.