15 Facts of Custom Process Action

Spending quality time with Custom Process Actions (which is shared in the Demystify of Demystify of Custom Process Action article), it is given an insight about the action and it's a really awesome feature that I usually miss during solution design. Custom Process Actions are the declarative way to design a solution with many different behavior business logic (JavaScript, workflow, and custom code).  It allows creating custom messages that extend the capabilities of defining new domain specific functionality to combine multiple message requests into a single request.

I am going to share few facts about Custom Process Action or Custom Action which will be helpful to design a CRM Solution.

1. It allows for creating new message that can be called from web service.
2. Custom Process Action will continue to provide a no code way to declaratively define synchronous business logic.
3. Custom Process Actions have been synchronous real time workflow and therefore not suitable to be converted to use power automate.
4. When we create an custom process action, the associated- real time workflow is automatically registered to execute in the main operation stage of the message execution pipeline.
5. The business logic of a custom process action is implemented using a workflow.
6. For developer, the creation of a new message means you can use the message in code with either the Web API or the Organization Service.
7. There are two ways to extend custom process actin using code: 
1. With Custom Workflow 
2. By registering Plugins on stages.
8. It is similar to real-time workflow and all the steps that can be used in real time workflow can be used in actions.
9. A security privilege named activate real time process (prvActivateSynchronousworkflow) is required to activate an action's real time workflow so that it can be executed.
10. Actions can execute by Workflow, Business Process Flow or from code that executes within a plugin or custom workflow.
11. Once an action is designed we can call it in below ways:
1. By Business process Flow
2. By Workflow 
3. By Server side code (plugin/workflow extension)
4. By JavaScript
5. By Custom Client Applications
12. Actions are synchronous and are executed under stage 30 of the execution pipeline.
13. The message for custom process action is only available with the workflow that it is activated. we can not register plugin steps for custom process action that is not active.
14. If we register any plugin steps on a custom process action it will establish a dependency in the solution that will prevent deleting the custom process action.
15. A custom process action is defined by a XAML window workflow foundation document which is transported as part of a solution

Summary:

The primary purpose of a Custom Process Action is to provide an easily configurable division of automation functionality that can be called from various locations within the Custom Process Action. It appears in the form of a message that is typically used to add new domain specific functionality to combine multiple requests into a single request.