Business process flow

What is a business process flow?

A business process flow is a guided bar across the top of a form in a model-driven Power App. It walks a user through a set of stages, such as qualify, review, and close, and inside each stage sit steps that hold the data the user needs to look at or fill in.

The point is to help people follow an agreed way of working and to show where a record stands. A business process flow does not run background tasks on its own; for notifications, system updates, and approvals you usually pair it with a cloud flow.

Business process flows run on Microsoft Dataverse tables. A single process can span several related tables, and the same record can have more than one active instance at a time.

Stages, steps, and process instances

A stage is a recognisable phase of the work. A sales process might use qualify, propose, and close; a case-handling process might use intake, review, decision, and follow-up.

A step points at a Dataverse column that matters in that stage. You can make a step required, so a user has to complete it before moving on. This is called stage-gating. It helps keep entry consistent, but it is a screen-level aid, not server-side validation: a rule that must hold no matter how the data arrives still needs to be enforced in Dataverse itself.

Each run has a process instance that records the active stage and the path taken, so a user can pick the work back up when they return to the record later. Branching lets the path depend on the data, for example sending a request above a certain amount through an extra review stage. A flow can hold up to 30 stages, but a bar with many branches gets hard to explain and test, so keep the routes readable.

A worked example

An organisation handles grant applications in a model-driven app. The first stage, intake, asks for the type of application, the applicant, and the date received, and an employee checks that the basic documents are present.

In the review stage, assessors fill in the scoring criteria. A branch adds a financial check when the requested amount is high. The decision stage records the outcome and who was authorised to make it.

When the user sets the decision status, a separate cloud flow starts. It drafts a letter, asks for approval where needed, and sends the result. The business process flow shows the human path through the case; the cloud flow handles the background steps. Permissions in Dataverse decide who can see or change records and fields, since hiding a step on the bar is not a security measure.

Business process flow versus cloud flow

A business process flow guides a person during interactive work in a model-driven app. The focus is on stages, data, and progress, and a user usually decides when the record moves to the next phase.

A cloud flow runs after a trigger and carries out actions through connectors. It can send a message, update data, or start an approval without anyone opening an app. The two complement each other: the process flow makes the way of working visible while cloud flows do the administrative steps. Avoid keeping the same status logic in both places without one clear source.

Business process flow versus BPMN

Business Process Model and Notation is a way to model business processes on paper. A BPMN diagram can describe events, tasks, decisions, messages, and parallel paths across several roles and systems.

A business process flow is a runnable UI element inside Dataverse and model-driven apps. It is narrower by design and revolves around stages and record data. A BPMN model can describe the whole end-to-end process, of which the business process flow runs only the user-facing part. Use BPMN to discuss and analyse a process when the wider collaboration is the point; use a business process flow to guide the actual case path in the app.

Design and management

Give stages names that employees already use in their day. Add only the steps a phase actually needs; a long bar with every possible field slows the work and hides the real decision points.

Test every branch, the return to earlier stages, and roles with limited rights. Check what happens when data changes through an import, an API, or another app, because not every change runs past the visible bar. Since August 2022, you create and manage business process flows through Power Apps and the solution explorer rather than standalone Power Automate, so include the flow in a solution and move it together with the tables, columns, forms, and automations it depends on.