What is the Issue?

When to use workflows and when plugin? What is the difference in these two?

What is Confusion –

Many of the developers or MS CRM beginners get confused in some scenarios whether to go with Workflows or to go with Plugins, as both can be used and has ability to perform specific task at server side.

Solution –

Plugins and workflows have some specific and significant differences-

1. Workflow has specific set of event messages i.e. triggering points as below.

On the other hand other than these basic event messages Plugin has huge set of event messages like AddItem, AddMember, GrantAccess, ModifyAccess, RemoveRelated and so on.

2. Workflows has limitations of Pre-event stages for some of the main events like delete has only before. And for plugin you can trigger the event on stages like pre-validation, pre-operation, post-operation. 

3. Some operations like deleting record from wizard workflow is not possible. So for this you can use custom workflow/Plugin.

One more simple rule you can remember- Whatever scenarios cannot be done with workflows, all that can be done using plugins.

Hope this will help you to understand Workflows and Plugins.

Enjoy MS CRM!!!