Business rules in Dynamics 2013 seems to be a useful feature for at least a few reasons:
- They can replace javascript validations, at least to an extent. In other words, CRM administrators have an option to implement validations without involving developers/consultants
- Business rules work for mobile forms
- They are implemented as workflows(xaml). Potentially, there are customizations opportunities there (I guess they are not exposed yet)
With that said, business rules seem to lack some of the useful features:
- There are only “AND” conditions, no “OR”
- Business rules are validated on the client side, so record updates made through SDK will bypass business rules validations
- Business rules are not in sync with form events. For example, a business rule could be created to set field value when some conditions are met. However, if there is a javascript attached to the onchange event of that field, such javascript will not fire when field value gets updated by the business rule
(Restored from my older blog, gotchahunter.net.. through webarchive:) )