Actions were introduced in CRM 2013; they allow us to design our custom messages like out-of-the-box events to execute our custom business logic. We can use actions to define our complex logic. Before actions there was no direct way to call server-side logic using client-side scripting. But actions allow us to define our own messages and call them using a SOAP request. We can't call them using OData end points. Once an action is defined, we can also register a plug-in on the action. We will discuss plug-ins in a later chapter.
Actions can be designed using the process designer; we can navigate to Settings | Processes to create a new action. Actions can be associated with a single entity or can be global, where they can be used with any entity. As soon as an action is created, CRM creates a corresponding synchronous workflow.
