Custom workflow activities (workflow assemblies)
You can extend the options available within the workflow designer used in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement. These extensions are made available within the designer by creating and registering an assembly that contains a class that extends the CodeActivity class. These extensions are commonly called workflow assemblies or workflow activities. You can use these custom extensions within the designer used for workflows, custom actions, and dialogs.
The capability to use these custom extensions with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (online) is provided by the Dataverse. For information about creating, deploying, and debugging these extensions see the Dataverse documentation: Dataverse > Workflow extensions.
The following section applies to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises).
On-premises options
On-premises developers should be aware of additional capabilities available when debugging or registering custom workflow activities and assemblies.
Registration of custom workflow activity assemblies
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) support execution of custom workflow activities in partial or full trust.
When registering a custom workflow activity assembly, you do not register a step as is done for plug-ins. For more detailed registration information, see Register a plug-in to be deployed on-premise
Debugging custom workflow activities
To debug a custom workflow activity, copy the .pdb file for the assembly to the %installdir%\server\bin\assembly folder. The assembly can be deployed as on-disk or stored in the database. The recommended deployment is in the database, but for debugging you should select on-disk. Next, attach the debugger to the CrmAsyncService.exe process. Make sure that you remove the .pdb file when you’ve finished debugging because it uses memory to have it loaded.
For more detailed debugging information, see Debug a plug-In.
Related Sections
Write Workflows to Automate Business Processes
Write Plug-Ins for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises)