Naming convention for (work)flows

In the white paper Microsoft Power Automate: A guide to building enterprise-ready flows that was published last year, one of the recommendations is to adopt a naming convention for use by your organization. I would like to share the naming convention we’re using for CDS|Dynamics 365 workflows and Power Automate flows.

CDS|Dynamics 365 workflows

CDS|Dynamics 365 workflows are connected to a primary entity, so events on records of that entity can trigger the workflow. This Primary Entity is listed in the view of the processes, as shown in the following example:

When creating a CDS|Dynamics 365 workflow its (initial) behaviour is configured by how it’s available to run and by which triggers it will start (automatically).

Keeping overview of the (initial) behaviour of the workflows in your environment(s) is important, and therefore we’ve introduced a naming convention for a “prefix” in the naming of the workflows. The configuration options of the workflow are captured in the prefix as follows:

Available to Run / Start when	Naming convention	Short (CUD)
Real-time workflow	RT>
As an on-demand process	OD
As a child process	CW
Record is created	OnCreate	C
Record status changes	OnChange(Status)	U(Status)
Record is assigned	OnChange(Owner)	U(Owner)
Record fields change	OnChange(fields)	U(fields)
Record is deleted	OnDelete	D

Here is a naming example of some workflows acting on the primary entity Account.

The rest of the workflow naming is a summary of the relevant conditions/actions/results of the workflow and is out of scope of the naming convention.

Power Automate flows

Power Automate flows can have triggers from connectors to all kind of applications and services. The naming convention focuses primarily on the flows with the trigger from the Common Data Service (current environment) connector.
In the Power Automate user interface the primary entity from the trigger is not shown in the view of the flows under ‘My flows’, ‘Team flows’, or when they’re part of a solution. So the naming convention is including the primary entity.

Available to Run / Start when	Naming convention	Short (CUD)
Primary Entity	Display Name
When a record is selected	OD
Child flow	CW
Record is created	Create	C
Record status changes	Update(Status)	U(Status)
Record is assigned	Update(Owner)	U(Owner)
Record fields change	Update(Filtering attributes)	U(fields)
Record is deleted	Delete	D

Here is a naming example of some flows with custom primary entities:

The highlighted part is referring to the trigger condition.

The naming convention is not definite but a first version, and will evolve based on new insights and feedback.

In the next blog posts I will show how to enforce the naming convention on CDS|Dynamics 365 workflows and on Power Automate flows, with the help of Power Automate flow.