My friend Mehmet “Sputnik” Ozdemir is insane. When he asked me how to convert a long and tedious workflow into an action, instead of painstakingly reproducing it step-by-step, I told him that it’s not possible, he’s dreaming and the only sensible thing to do is to call that workflow from the newly minted action.

Did I mention he’s insane? Because he managed to come up with the instructions on how to convert a workflow into an action. Sounds too good to be true? Well, actually it does work every time in 83% of the cases. Readers digest version:

• Start with a realtime workflow. Convert an asynchronous into a realtime. Less chances of failure.
• Backup the orgs
• Create a temp solution (let’s call it: Workflow To Action Conversion)
• Add the existing Workflow that you want to convert to an action into this solution (eg: Generate Sales Metrics)
• Create an empty action in the temp solution (eg: Generate Sales Metrics Action)
• Export the solution (WorkflowToActionConversion.zip)
• Extract WorkflowToActionConversion.zip and browse to Workflow folder
• If everything has gone to plan you should have two files in here that correspond the workflow and the empty action. Open both *.xaml files into a tabbed editor (I like Notepad++)
• In the Action*.xaml file search for: <mva:VisualBasic.Settings>Assembly references and imported namespaces for internal implementation</mva:VisualBasic.Settings>
  Select this line and everything below it and replace it with the same section from the Workflow*.xaml file. Save the Action*.xaml file.
• Put the Action*.xaml file back into the WorkflowToActionConversion.zip
• Import the WorkflowToActionConversion.zip