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Calculated field or Flow?

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Posted on by ac1drain

I'm currently working on a model driven app for employee Offboarding. On my form there are a series of tasks for two groups; lets call them Group A and Group B.

When Group A completes all of their tasks and marks them as complete (a series of yes/no fields) - I have a calculated field "Group A Tasks Complete" that gets set to Yes. I'd also like to have a date & timestamp to accompany that so we can track when and how long it took each group to complete their tasks.

I tried making a date/time field that is calculated when "Group A Tasks Complete" equals Yes, then set the date/time to =NOW(), but that just gets changed anytime the form is updated. I'm wondering if it's possible to achieve what I'm after with a calculated field, or if I need to create a Flow that triggers when a record is updated and populate the date/time field that way.

Thanks!

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Prakash4691 1,332 on at

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Hi @ac1drain ,

Calculated field will run every time when click on save button. Expected OOB behavior, calculates only on save. So, if "Group A Tasks Complete" equals Yes then datetime will get update every time while clicking save button.

Modify your filter condition, "Group A Tasks Complete" equals Yes and datetime field should be empty/null/does not contain data then update datetime field to NOW(). That will work.

Please mark it as solution. If it answers your question.

Regards,
Prakash

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ChrisPiasecki 6,428 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @ac1drain,

A calculated field doesn't actually store a value, it's a virtual field that is computed whenever the record is retrieved (saving on a form causes a refresh / retrieve).

What I would recommend is this:

Create a business rule scoped at entity level, have it set a Completed Flag to Yes when all your other fields are set to yes.

You can then setup a classic Dataverse real-time workflow that triggers on creation of the record or on update of the Completed flag field.

In the workflow add a condition if the Completed Flag is set to yes, set the completed date, using the Process > Execution Time.

Add an else condition to clear out the Completed date (meaning the competed flag is no and thus the completed date should be empty).

One final general recommendation I'll make is that it's more useful to use Datetime fields for tracking completion of tasks versus yes/no, as it provides the same functionality but provides better visibility and reporting on your data as you can better identify bottlenecks in your tasks/processes.

Yes/No fields are fine for process triggering behavior such as this scenario where you have a Completed Flag.

Hope this helps.

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ac1drain 42 on at

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Thanks @ChrisPiasecki I'm going to try this out. If I may bother you with one more question -- what's the general consensus on when to use a workflow vs. a flow? The classic UI is telling me to use flow instead of a background workflow.

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ChrisPiasecki 6,428 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @ac1drain,

For asynchronous (background) workflows, you should user Power Automate cloud flows instead as it suggests.

If your workflows need to be synchronous (real-time), then you need to use the classic Dataverse workflow because Power Automate only runs asynchronously. You'll notice if you uncheck the background workflow in the workflow editor that recommendation message will disappear.

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ac1drain 42 on at

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Thanks @ChrisPiasecki, you've been extremely helpful. With a little fumbling through the classic interface I was able to get it working.

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