Business Rules in MS CRM

Business Rules

Business rules provide an easy declarative way to consistently evaluate the business logic on both client and server, without the need to write code. The client-side logic evaluation is more immediate because it is performed when you open and update the record form, while the server-side provides a consistent logic evaluation on the server.

·      The business rule is executed only on the client if the rule’s scope is set at a form level (all forms or a specific form). The rules are executed when a record form is loaded and updated.

·      The business rule is executed both on the server and the client if the rule’s scope is set at an entity level. The rules on the server-side are executed when a record is created or saved.

Source: MS TechNet

Business Rule is a collection of conditions and actions used to enforce simple business logic and built on top of the workflow infrastructure.

Business Rule will only be able to provide below capabilities through actions:

• Validate data and show an error message
• Set field value
• Set field requirement levels
• Enable or disable field
Show or Hide a field

Business Rule will only use an AND operator which means that all the conditions must be true before the actions will be triggered (no support for OR operator) --- 

• Business Rule will only run either when the form loads or when field values change (no support to run when a record is being saved)
• Business Rule will only run on a specific entity (no support to run across different entities)
• If there are multiple Business Rules for the same field, they will run in the order they were added to the system which means the last modified one will run last
• Since Business Rule is built on top of workflow architecture, any fields associated with activated Business Rules can’t be deleted
• When you set a field value using a Business Rule, any JavaScript OnChange event handlers for that field will not run
• No support to call JavaScript web resource from Business Rule
• No support to connect to external data sources
• Business Rule will run on the Web Client (all browsers), Outlook client (online and offline), Microsoft Dynamics CRM for tablets (Surface and iPad).
• Business rules work only with fields. If you need to interact with other visible elements, such as tabs and sections, within the form you need use form scripts.

Dynamics CRM 2015 Update

This includes:

• Support for enriched business logic including 

With these enhancements, there are a set of limitations that everyone should be aware of:

·

       No grouping of expressions in a condition