TLDR: I made a reusable script for model-driven apps that allows you to use custom buttons to move between business process flow stages. It also prevents user from using the default buttons. The unmanaged solution is here: GitHub/Releases and the code is here: GitHub

Business Process Flow in Power Platform guides app users through a sequence of predefined steps, ensuring that all the required fields are completed before progressing to the next stage.

The buttons allowing users to move to the next stage are.. well... well hidden.

bpf buttons

Good choice? Bad choice?

user experience

Perhaps when working with a small group of users, it's manageable to show each person where to find the Next Stage / Previous Stage buttons. But when you're building an app intended for company-wide use, it becomes an obstacle.

Custom buttons

That's why it's common to add custom buttons to the toolbar (and to declutter it while you're at it).

These custom buttons can be shown or hidden (or enabled/disabled) based on specific conditions, such as whether the user has a certain role, the form is completed, or an approver has made a decision.

You may also use these buttons to trigger additional logic, like updating the "Status Reason" field, showing notifications, or even preventing the user from moving to the next stage based on custom conditions.

However, if you take this approach, make sure the default buttons cannot be used to bypass this additional logic.

Disabling / hiding BPF buttons?

It is of course possible to manipulate the DOM of your model-driven apps, but... it's not supported. The supported approach is to use the onPreStageChange event to call the executionContext.getEventArgs().preventDefault().

This event runs before the stage changes - whether triggered by a user clicking one of the standard Business Process Flow buttons (i.e. Next Stage, Previous Stage, or Set Active Stage), or by programmatic calls such as formContext.data.process.moveNext, formContext.data.process.movePrevious, or formContext.data.process.setActiveStage.

This means that when implementing custom logic, we need to make sure the custom buttons are allowed to perform the stage transition, while blocking all other requests.

Gotcha: the "Finish" action

Unfortunately, according to my tests, calling preventDefault() in either the OnPreStageChange or the OnProcessStatusChange will not stop the Finish action in Business Process Flow.

I worked around this issue by adding an additional, final stage and immediately completing the flow as soon as that stage is reached.
This stage wouldn’t be used by users - it is there to help finalize the process.

The solution

I made a "plan minimum" solution that covers the most important parts of the process. It consists of two custom buttons and a reusable script that:

  • ensures that only custom buttons can move business process flow between stages,
  • updates the record's Status Reason and Status fields according to the current stage,
  • calls rollback function if required,
  • displays notifications,
  • automatically finalizes the last stage,
  • restarts the business process flow if Previous Stage button is clicked in Finalized stgae

Move to the next stage

Move Next

Move to the previous stage

Move Previou

This logic is supported by a client-side script used by the form and the custom buttons:

  1. In the form's OnLoad, an event handler is added for the onPreStageChange event.
  2. The onPreStageChange event handler ensures the request came from the custom buttons. Otherwise the navigation is cancelled using executionContext.getEventArgs().preventDefault().
  3. The custom buttons set a isCustomButton to true to make sure the move to the stage will be allowed. The variable is saved in the browser's local cache.
  4. The custom buttons handle any additional logic (e.g. set record's fields) and move to the next/previous stage. In case of errors they call rollback functions. Finally, they reset the isCustomButton to false.

  5. The business process flow is finished by completing the process and setting the record to Inactive.

  6. During process restart, the record is re-activated and the business process flow is moved back to the previous stage.

The code supports both scenarios: with and without automatic completion of the final stage.

Demo

In order to see this demo in action, download the packaged solution from Github and import it to your Power Platform Environment.

Source code

If you'd like to use this script in your own solution, the source code is also on GitHub. It's Typescript, you will need - Dataverse DevTools