Sunday, March 20, 2016

Round Robin Assignment Microsoft Dynamics CRM

What is Round Robin?

It is rotation of tasks through a group. A task could be a lead, case etc. Round Robin term frequently used when to assign tasks to team members. Leads and cases are commonly assigned through “Round Robin” implementation, but it can used for other entities too.

In this blog, I have discussed Round Robin assignment for leads in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but the concept is same for other entities too.

In this example, we assign newly generated lead to a member of specific team (SalesTeam), instead of doing it manually we have done it through round robin. Here "SalesTeam" can have variable members, and team size  can change any time (member(s) can be added or deleted).

All this is achieved through a custom entity "counter", workflow and custom activity.

Custom Entity: "counter" entity will have integer value in a field "currentcounter" and 1:N relationship between "counter" and "lead" entity. This "currentcounter" will be pointer to a member of "SalesTeam" to whom new lead should get assigned. When "currentcounter" values reaches to threshold i.e. Count of Member of "SalesTeam", it will get reset. 

Custom Activity: It provides a user(member) entity record which belongs to "SalesTeam" based on "currentcounter" value of "counter" entity and also provides next "currentcounter" value calculated based on no of members in team ("SalesTeam").

Workflow: Assign lead to a user and update "currentcounter" value in "counter" entity by the value returned from custom activity.

Lead
Sales Team Member
CurentCounter
Remarks


1
“counter” and “lead” has 1:N relationship, a record has added in “counter” entity with “currentcounter” value set as 1, which is pointer to first member of “SalesTeam”
Lead1
USER1
2
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)!=currentcounter Action: INCREMENT currentcounter by 1
Lead2
USER2
3
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)==currentcounter Action: RESET currentcounter to 1
Lead3
USER3
1
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)!=currentcounter Action: INCREMENT currentcounter by 1
Lead4
USER1
2
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)!=currentcounter Action: INCREMENT currentcounter by 1
Lead5
USER2
3
One more member added to team (user4)
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)!=currentcounter Action: INCREMENT currentcounter by 1
Lead6
USER3
4
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)==currentcounter Action: RESET currentcounter to 1
Lead7
USER4
1
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)!=currentcounter Action: INCREMENT currentcounter by 1
Lead8
USER1
2
Two members are deleted from team (User2 and User3)
Condition: CountofMembers(SalesTeam)==currentcounter Action: RESET currentcounter to 1


Initially system will have one record inserted for counter entity and have value "1" for "currentcounter" field. Based on team size the "currentcounter" value will be updated.

*Note: Team name "SalesTeam" is hard coded  and case sensitive in this example. In case you are implementing it for a different team, change its name accordingly.

Implementation Round Robin

A. Customization

Create Custom Entity “Counter”



Add Field “currentcounter” to Custom Entity “counter”



Create 1:N relationship between “counter” and “lead” Entity



1.       Customize “lead” Entity Form




Add relational lookup to the lead entity form and change its visibility setting from field properties.



Save and Publish your changes, and add an entity record for counter entity




B. SDK - Custom Activity

Create custom activity and register it in Plug-in Registration Tool.


using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow;
using System;
using System.Activities;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace POC.AssignCounter
{
    public sealed partial class GetUseronCounter : CodeActivity
    {

        protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext executionContext)
        {
            try
            {
                IWorkflowContext context = executionContext.GetExtension<IWorkflowContext>();

                IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory =
                  executionContext.GetExtension<IOrganizationServiceFactory>();

                IOrganizationService service =
                    serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(context.UserId);

                //Get entity from InArgument
                Entity counter = service.Retrieve("new_counter",
                   this.InputEntity.Get(executionContext).Id, new ColumnSet("new_currentcounter"));
                             
                if (counter.Contains("new_currentcounter"))
                {
                    //Fetch xml to get users of a team. Here one user will be returned per page and page position will be
                    //decided on current counter value.
                    string xmlquery = "<fetch version=\"1.0\"  mapping=\"logical\" distinct=\"true\" page=\"" + (int)counter["new_currentcounter"] + "\" count=\"1\" returntotalrecordcount=\"true\">" +
                                        "<entity name=\"systemuser\">" +
                                        "<attribute name=\"systemuserid\" />" +
                                        "<order attribute=\"fullname\" descending=\"false\" />" +
                                        "<link-entity name=\"teammembership\" from=\"systemuserid\" to=\"systemuserid\" visible=\"false\" intersect=\"true\">" +
                                        "<link-entity name=\"team\" from=\"teamid\" to=\"teamid\" alias=\"aa\">" +
                                        "<filter type=\"and\">" +
                                        "<condition attribute=\"name\" operator=\"eq\" value=\"SalesTeam\" />" +
                                        "</filter>" +
                                        "</link-entity>" +
                                        "</link-entity>" +
                                        "</entity>" +
                                        "</fetch>";

                    FetchExpression query = new FetchExpression(xmlquery);
                    EntityCollection users = service.RetrieveMultiple(query);

                    //Set out argument OutputEntity- first user entity of resultset.
                   this.OutputEntity.Set(executionContext, new EntityReference("systemuser", new Guid(users[0].Attributes["systemuserid"].ToString())));

                    int newcounter = 1;
                    //Counter value should not exceed to total member count of team, in case if it exceeds
                    //that means user has been deleted from team.
                    if ((int)counter["new_currentcounter"] >= users.TotalRecordCount)
                    {
                        //Set default value 1
                        newcounter = 1;                                          
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        //Increment by 1 current counter value
                        newcounter = (int)counter["new_currentcounter"] + 1;
                    }

                    //Set out argument OutputCounter- new counter value, that will be further
                    //used by workflow to update counter entity.
                    this.OutputCounter.Set(executionContext, newcounter);

                }            

            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException("GetUseronCounter ERROR>>>>>: " + ex.StackTrace.ToString(), ex);
            }
        }

        [RequiredArgument]
        [Input("Counter")]
        [ReferenceTarget("new_counter")]
        public InArgument<EntityReference> InputEntity { get; set; }

        [Output("user")]
        [ReferenceTarget("systemuser")]
        public OutArgument<EntityReference> OutputEntity { get; set; }

        [Output("NewCounter")]   
        public OutArgument<int> OutputCounter { get; set; }

    }
}


C. Workflow Creation
     

Create a synchronous workflow 




     When a new lead is created in system, this real time workflow will get triggered. And all the steps defined will execute in order.

Step 1: Set a counter value for newly created lead. A lead can be created from web forms or through SDK calls. We don't want user to select counter entity every time whenever a new lead is created in system. Also there is a relationship between counter and leads, therefore a counter record needs to be set for lead and round robin implementation.




Step 2: Custom activity will be called, it takes the counter entity assigned to the lead.







The above activity will be returning two parameter, one will be the user to whom leads should be assigned and the other will the next "currentcounter" value

Step 3
: Update the "counter" entity's  "currentcounter" field value by the updated value returned from Step2.




Step 4: Assign lead to the returned system user from custom workflow activity Step 2. 






Step 5
: Stop the workflow with "Success"


Step 6
: Save and Activate workflow.

Test - Implementation Round Robin

Create Sales Team and add members




Create leads in system it will be auto assigned to Sale’s team members.





You can add or delete members to team, round robin will assign leads to a member of team.





4 comments:

  1. Its very helpful. Thankyou ! However all my leads are getting assigned to the first user in the sales team.. :( not sure why

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello,

    If two leads are created at the same time (or relatively close together within seconds)how we will fix that concurrency issue.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am having a team in that team there are 10 users i used this code and it was working fine for me but recently admin deleted few(2-3) users from the team but the counter entity current counter was set to 10 and i am getting error while creating leads.How can we check if the counter values is equal to no of users in a team before executing this code logic.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello,

    Its really very useful.

    Thanks alot

    ReplyDelete