Hands On with Microsoft Dynamics GP October 2019 Release New Features – Workflow Enhancements: Export and import workflows

This post is part of the Hands On with Microsoft Dynamics GP October 2019 Release New Features – Workflow Enhancements series where I am going hands on with the workflow enhancements of the new version of Microsoft Dynamics GP; it is part of the larger Hands On with Microsoft Dynamics GP October 2019 Release New Features series.

The fifth workflow enhancement is not a new workflow type, but the long overdue addition of the ability to import and export a workflow process. With this new enhancement, you can now export a workflow to a json file which you can use to import into an entirely separate Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation.

This means that you can copy a workflow from a development server into a live environment or, in the case of someone like myself who works for a partner, from our development system to a client’s system.

When you import a workflow process from a json file, you must specify the name of the new workflow (it defaults the name from the selected json file, but you can override the default name).

To export a workflow process, open the workflow to export and click Export/Import and then click Export:

Set a File Name and click Export; this will output a json file containing the workflow process:

on the destination system, select the workflow type and click Export/Import and select Import:

Select the file to import and, if desired, change the Workflow Name and then click Import:

A confirmation dialog will be displayed showing that the workflow process has been imported:

The new workflow process will be imported, but the approvers need to be set manually:

The workflow export/import is a well overdue feature which I am very happy to see added. I can understand why Microsoft have not included functionality to import the assigned approvers, but I wish there had been an option for this. When importing between dev or QA and live, workflows are often already configured with the relevant users.

Not importing them means a lot of extra effort when it comes to a large workflow process. In these instances I think I’ll need to remain with my current approach of exporting and importing entire test companies containing the workflow process to be copied; Dynamics Gp already includes functionality to copy workflows between companies.