Retrieve instance URL from Custom Workflow Activity

When this requirement arises, I though it should be a matter of reading it from context or so on. Anyway, then I realized it’s not available and no straightforward way of doing it. So I would suggest below two ways to do that based on your circumstance. 

If your system has a separate entity for configuration data, like key value pairs, its best to store there. Advantage is this entry could be accessed from many other areas as needed. Since its store as data, deployments don’t override. 

If you really want to retrieve dynamically, there is one other way.

IWorkflowContext context = ExecutionContext.GetExtension<IWorkflowContext>();
context.OrganizationName

This attribute gives you the unique name of the instance. 

While this is unique to instance, you are able to write a case statement etc. to retrieve the correct URL. This is good because your system will switch dynamically to correct URL but you are keeping URLs in the code itself. This means if you add new environment you need to modify the code and re-deploy the assembly.

How to track the changes done for a Workflow

There are two parts to the question. If you have written Custom workflow Activities, obviously you have written in Visual Studio (Or similar Dev tool) and may have stored in a repository. In fact, you are all good to track back what changes are made by developers in different occasions. 

Tricky part comes next: How to track down the changes done to a Workflow through the OOB workflow template. That’s adding/ removing different actions such as Create, Update etc. Unfortunately, there is no proper method. 

Anyway, there is a little trick. If Workflow was commissioned to the system for a while (Async or real time), chances are there could be sessions those failed. Failed sessions are always kept associated to the workflow. 

Now if you check an old failed session, you will be able to see all the steps existed in the workflow at that time. This is not a perfect solution, but I managed to explain an issue in one of my projects today by doing this to prove someone has removed an essential step. Unless this method, no one would be able to explain.

Thought of sharing since this could help someone!