Configure security role in Dynamics 365 business process flow

Starting with managing contacts, automating marketing tasks, and getting valuable insights on your consumer data - Customer Relationship Management software does a lot for a company. But all of the benefits can come to naught if you find yourself in the middle of a security compromise.

Consumer data is sensitive, and any leaks could mean massive damage to your reputation and brand loyalty. And that's why the ultimate CRM tool, Microsoft Dynamics 365, pays extra attention to providing robust security. Here is a brief overview of the Microsoft Dynamics security methods that help you keep your data safe and sound when creating Business Process Flows in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Microsoft Dynamics Security

Microsoft Dynamics 365 implements security with the help of security roles and associated authorizations and access levels to protect your data. For any data record, you can specify several security roles and their relevant data access privileges.

For instance, only managers can have write access to a customer address field. In contrast, a sales rep can have view-only access to the same field. Similarly, you can also implement the access levels to closely reflect your actual organizational hierarchy and business units to help ensure safe transfer and data sharing. If you would like to learn more about those different roles, we have a whole article here just for you. Afterwards, you can follow our guide to create new security roles in Dynamics 365. But, before jumping into all things security, let's get more info on Business Process Flows.

What is Dynamics 365 Business Process Flow?

What Is It?

Business Process Flows in Dynamics 365 is a set of features that allow you to standardize the business's operations and tasks. They help you set the definitive guidelines and define the various parameters determining a particular work process or customer service protocol. You probably already use it daily without realizing it, when you follow steps listed in the ribbon at the top of your CRM's lead or opportunity form.

What Can We Do With It?

With Business Process Flow, you can create a standard template for business workflows that can be shared across departments and standardize processes across the organization. It can be used for quick employee induction and training purposes as well. For instance, if your company uses a standard procedure for consumer issue resolutions, defining it with a business process flow will make it easier for all service representatives to follow the standard procedure easily.

Why Use It?

Business Process Flows help you optimize your existing business operations. By providing you a guide that can be depended upon, you can ensure that anyone can get any job done effectively with the best possible measures.

You can ensure consistent efficiency and increased productivity with the help of Business Process Flows.

Here are some of the benefits of Business Process Flows:

• Helps you provide a better user experience customized to each security role;
• Helps track a business process visually;
• Reduces the need for training new employees;
• Reduces the chances of manual error and mistakes.

Dynamics 365 Business Process Flow Entities

Multiple Entities And Multiple Business Process Flows Per Entity

Business processes could involve multiple entities, each with its security controls and privileged access levels. But not every person may have the knowledge or training to deal with all types of entities. Using Dynamics 365 business process flow, the focus on entities can be transferred to the actual process; any cross-departmental process can be carried out without any hassle.

Business process flows per each entity can be efficiently handled by the Dynamics 365 CRM. It can help avoid mishandling of entities even when multiple business processes engage with multiple entities.

Because Of The Multiple Entities You Need To Be Sure To Secure All This

The way Dynamics 365 CRM handles multiple entity access makes sure all such data transfers and transformations are done securely and in compliance with the data access protocols established.

Typically, a business process flow represents a custom entity that stores the details of a process as a record within that entity. A business process entity will have records containing details from other data records like contacts, leads, opportunities, and more. And when there are cross entities involved, all associated data records will be stored for each entity involved with the process. This can pose a problem in terms of security roles and access privileges as cross entities could affect data records that are made accessible to specific security roles. To solve this, Dynamics 365 uses a mechanism called stage gating. All steps within a business process are grouped into stages. To advance to the next stage of the process, people should provide the proper data for the relevant data fields.

Control Dynamics 365 Business Process Flow Security Role

To further strengthen security, Dynamics 365 allows you to specify security roles for each business process to control the data access and sharing within a process flow.

User Security Role

A user security role refers to the specific security role assigned to each user. Each user security role has its own set of privileges and data access rights, and users can only access or manipulate data fields that fall under their security role. Whenever a new entity record is created, the available business process flow definitions for that particular user security role will be shown to the user. The first of such a list of business process flow definitions are applied as the default flow if the user selects no other business process flow.

Thus, only users who have the authorization to work with the entities are given access to the associated records.

Dynamics 365 Business Process Flow Security Role Privileges

Privileges

When you create custom entity types, you can specify the set of privileges for that particular entity.

For a business process flow, the available privileges that can be assigned to a security role are:

• Create - Allows to create a new business process flow entity and subsequently a new record;
• Read - Allows view-only access to a record;
• Write - Allows updating the business process flow state or navigation;
• Delete- Allows deleting a business process flow instance;
• Append - Allows cross entity navigation from an entity to the business process flow;
• Append To- Allows cross entity navigation to an entity from a business process flow.

Dynamics 365 Business Process Flow Security Role Configuration

Here are the steps to configuring security roles for a business process flow in Dynamics 365:

• Go to Setting > Security > Security Roles
• Choose the security role you want to add to the business process flow of your choice;
• Go to the Business Process Flows tab;
• You can view the existing security roles, if any, and their associated data privileges like create, read, delete and more. From this information, you can get to know which business process flows can be used for the particular security role you have chosen;
• You can add the security privileges to the selected security role by checking on the corresponding privileges;
• Then click on save and close.

There are several security considerations that you have to make when configuring your business process flow security roles. You have to consider the actual use case, the data regulations involved, and the possible impact on business. And you need experts to help you find the right way to configure your security roles as data security is of extreme importance for any organization.