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Scenario Overview

In this scenario you have a custom entity called Training Course which has a N:N relationship with the Contact entity. You need to implement a business rule (rollup) that will keep track of the count of Contacts that are associated to a training course. In effect count (rollup) the number of Attendees on to the Training entity.

North52 Decision Suite Solution

The North52 Decision Suite solution works like this,

  • We create a formula that can hook into the Associate & Disassociate events within Dynamics 365. So it executes whenever a many to many relationship gets created or removed.
  • As the association events are generic we need to check for the schema name of the N:N relationship between the 2 entities
  • If the schema name matches then we update the field 'new_totalattendees' on the training course entity
  • This is calculated by finding the total number of contacts associated with training course

North52 Decision Suite Steps

The following set of steps assumes you have an entity called Training Course already created with a N:N relationship between it & the contact entity

  • Create a new formula of type 'N:N Associate'
  • Set the Source Entity to 'Training Course'
  • Copy & paste the formula below into the formula description field & click save
  • You are ready to test
     

Formula

if(GetAssociationRelationshipName() = 'new_trainingcourse_contact', 
 
                  UpdateRecord('new_trainingcourse',   
                               [new_trainingcourse.new_trainingcourseid],        
                               SetAttribute('new_totalattendees', 
                                            FindCount('new_trainingcourse_contact', 
                                                      'new_trainingcourseid',
                                                       [new_trainingcourse.new_trainingcourseid],
                                                       'new_trainingcourseid','0'))),
'NoOp')

​Wizard - FindCount()

 Please see below the wizard you can use to create the FindCount() function call used in this formula. Each of these are searchable via the search icon.
 

  
Note 1:  You will need to setup the exact same formula but set the Formula Type to N:N Disassociate if you need to handle contacts being removed from the many to many relationship

Did you know?

North52 Decision Suite helps streamline complex business processes

North52 Decision Suite is a cloud-based or on-premise decision management/decision engine platform for the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform that uses data, analytics and business rules to automate decisions.

Companies use North52 to streamline their processes, improve the quality of the decisions inside their Dynamics 365 systems, and shorten the time it takes to adjust to business and competitive changes.

Learn more about the North52 Decision Suite

Keywords: FindCount, GetAssociationRelationshipName, UpdateRecord, SetAttribute, Formula Manager