Lifecycle Base setup

STAEDEAN Lifecycle Base drives Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Workflows. Lifecycle Base is a common extension that works as a framework solution. You can extend it further in different products.

Workflows complete a specific task, mostly around approvals. Lifecycle Base is more versatile because it:

• Manages the life of a record with a status code.

• Tracks status changes of that record and shows the history of when and by whom the status changed.

• Assists users in business processes through pre-defined sets of state transitions.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Workflows are also called Sequential Workflows. Lifecycle Base represents the State Machine type of workflow. When you combine them, they work well together. They automate the approval request process by starting a workflow. When the workflow responds, the Lifecycle state changes based on that response.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central workflow usually starts with Send Approval Request from the ribbon, for example on the Sales Order document. The same action is available as an Action Handler in Lifecycle Base: SendDocForApproval.

When a Lifecycle that contains this action handler is released, an event starts in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Workflow. For example, for items, the event is "Approval of an item is requested." This event starts the workflow.

Lifecycle Base states have an extra setting: Approval State. This setting marks a state as Approved or Rejected.

Workflows can place restrictions on records. These restrictions define what is restricted on the record. In Lifecycle Base, a restricted record cannot move to certain states. This means states marked as Approved or Rejected must also have a condition where an expression checks whether the record is restricted. If the expression returns true, the user cannot select that state.

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Terminology

The following table explains Lifecycle Base terminology:

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