Overview

With the Dynamics CRM 2015 upgrade, there have been some great enhancements and additions to the Product Catalog feature. In this blog, we will discuss the new product lifecycle process depicted in the diagram below.

As you can see, the new product lifecycle process allows records can be revised, reverted, retired, and activated! Let's walk through each of the statuses and discuss how they fit into the new process.

Draft

• When you are creating Product records (product family, product, or bundle record) are in Draft status by default.
• In Draft status, the Product record is not available to any user to use. That also means you are not able to search or do a lookup.
• The product form will be read-only.
• You can edit and work on the record until is ready to be published.

Active

• Once you publish your product item, it will be in Active state. It is now available for users to use.

• One thing to note, make sure the parent family record is also published. If not, you will receive an error.

Note: If you publish a product record that does not have a parent product, you can enable the setting to "Create products in active state". Here are the steps:

• Navigate to Settings in CRM then Administration
• Select System Settings and a window will pop up.

• Select Sales tab and Select Yes for Select whether products should be created in the active state, then click OK.

Revise and Under Revision

• If your product record needs to be updated (revised), you can set this to Under Revision state. When you are complete with the revision, you are able to publish it again and the latest updates will be applied and visible.
  

• While a product record is under revision, the previous published version is active for users to use.
  
• CRM will store all the previous versions. You can view it by clicking View Published Product from the product form.
  

Revert

• You can revert a product to discard all the changes done to the product after it has been revised. Don't forget to Publish for the changes to apply. This will set the product record back to Active state
  
• When you apply revert to the product family record, the product record will apply the last published product properties for the product family and its child records.
• When you apply revert to a product or a bundle record, the product record will apply the last published product properties to the individual record only.

Retire

• When a product is no longer needed, you can Retire the product. The status will change to Retired. Once it is retired, the product is no longer available to be used, you are no not able to add it to a bundle or add a product to the retired bundle, and you are not able to reactivate, unless it is a kit or doesn't belong to a Product family.
  

• If you retired a product by mistake, you can clone and recreate a similar one.
  

• With the new 2015 update of the hierarchy of the Product catalog, when you retire a Product family, all products under will be retired as well.
  

• Note: If a kit product or product record that does not have a parent record, it can be reactivated.
  

Conclusion

Hopefully you have a better understanding of the Product Lifecycle. Now you know that product records can be revised, reverted, retired and activated! For even more Dynamics CRM info, check out our Education department and continue on the grand journey of CRM!