So you decided to follow tip 46 and use process flows instead of the sales stage field. How do you update your existing records? If you open a closed opportunity, for example, the record (and the process flow stage) will be non editable.

First, understand how the process and stage are stored on the record. if you do an advanced find of an entity enabled for Business Process Flow (BPF), you will see a field called ProcessID and another field called StageID. These fields store the ID of the Business Process Flow and the Business Process Stage associated with the record.

So if you want to update your existing records so the Business Process Flow stage matches the existing sales stage, the following is an easy approach.

1. Create your Business Process Flow with the appropriate stages.
2. Create one record for each stage. Give each record a different stage, and set the legacy sales stage field to the corresponding value. For example, if you have a sales stage value of “Qualified,” set the legacy sales stage to “Qualified” and move the Business Process Flow to the “Qualified” stage. Repeat for the other stages.
3. Create a view of the records you created, being sure to display the Sales Stage, ProcessID, and StageID fields. Export to Excel. This will give you a cross-reference of legacy Sales Stage to Process Stage.
4. Do a new advanced find for all records in the entity. Include the Sales Stage, ProcessID, and StageID fields in the column layout.
5. Export all pages to Excel, selecting to the checkbox to allow for reimport.
6. Update the spreadsheet using your cross reference list created in step 3. It helps if your list is sorted by sales stage. Update the ProcessID and StageID to match the appropriate value based on the sales stage.
7. Import into CRM using Import Utility.

This will get all records Business Process Flow Stage ID values to match the legacy Sales Stage. Even existing inactive records, like closed Opportunities, can be updated using this method.