Using Workflow to Create Automated Responses

You can use the workflow feature to create an automated response.  The Workflow Manager is a separate tool that you use outside of Microsoft CRM. You can find an overview of the workflow feature in the following Microsoft CRM online Help topic.

Creating and Managing Workflow Processes and Rules
Processes and Rules

To run more smoothly, organizations often standardize business processes. Within these organizations, individual business units might have unique business processes. Often employees are unaware of these differing processes. In addition, they might depend on co-workers for information, or be unaware that the completion of certain tasks are dependent on another employee's completion of the previous tasks.

You can use the Microsoft CRM Workflow Manager tool to automate internal business processes by creating workflow rules and sales processes to carry out routine tasks. These rules and processes can be designed to ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time, and help employees track the steps they have to take to complete their work.

Your managers can define, automate, and enforce specific business rules, policies, and procedures. Microsoft CRM can automatically escalate overdue service requests, alert salespeople about pipeline management issues, and alert the sales force about key events.

With Microsoft CRM Workflow tools you can:

• Define business policies based on established processes.
• Ensure that customer commitments are met.
• Automatically escalate issues to management when required.
• Level workloads across teams and territories.
• Manage key business policies and procedures.
• Ensure a consistent service process.

Using Sales Processes

A sales process is a group of interrelated action steps and the rules that drive the transition between these steps. When a sales process is created, the event that will trigger the sales process is defined. Each step in the process is a set of actions that are created within Microsoft CRM, for example, the creation of an activity, assignment of a lead, or sending of an e-mail message.

Business sales processes apply across the organization and are created by someone with sufficient privileges, such as the system administrator or business owner. For example, your system administrator can create one sales process to handle the assignment and follow-up for leads, accounts, or opportunities, and then create another process to initiate and finalize contracts.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.