Schedule a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Workflow

Question

I am in the process of puting together a custom workflow activity to be used in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

What I would like to ultimatly acheive is configure a workflow that runs on a schedueled basis i.e run every 2 hours Monday to Friday, rather than on a particular "CRM event" like create, delete status change ect.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Maybe schedule it outside of crm?

Edit 1:

What we are doing is processing rows in a staging table that gets generated from a front-end site. We are creating contact/account and opportunity records in CRM based on the data captured from the front-end.

The more I think about it the more I'm thinking that using workflow is possibly not the best solution?

What about a using a windows service?

Answer 1

Workflow was not best option for this situation due to the following:

• Can't schedule it to run
• The process can only be triggered by a CRM create, update or similar message

I went with a combination of the following: A SQL CLR sproc that gets called on an UPDATE trigger on the staging table. The CLR sproc calls a webservice that generates CRM contacts/accounts. That way the front-end site can create records and set a "ready to process" flag once all data has been entered.

The requirement changed from a schedule solution to real time processing (well not ACTUALLY real time). The process needs to run as records are entered from the front end site.

Hope all that makes sense!