Workflows

Overview¶

You can publish workflows that are defined in VCF Operations Orchestrator to the VCF Automation catalog to make them available as self-service catalog items to project users in your organization. When publishing an Orchestrator workflow to the VCF Automation catalog, you can configure a custom icon and a name for the catalog item that is different from the name of the default workflow name.

Warning

Note that if you want to add a custom form to the catalog item for an Orchestrator workflow, you need to create it in VCF Operations Orchestrator.

Project Structure¶

Build Tools for VMware Aria stores each object for a workflow that you publish as a catalog item in a single JSON file with the name of the workflow under the src/main/resources/workflows directory in the project content on the local filesystem. The JSON file contains the full definition of the workflow catalog item.

Following is a sample listing of the local filesystem for a workflow catalog item with the name Add a user to a user group.

Local Project Content

src/
└─ main/
    └── resources/
        └── workflows/
            └── Add a user to a user group.json

Sample Project File Content¶

Following is a sample listing of the content of a workflow catalog item definition (as defined in the project archetype) that is stored in the src/main/resources/workflows/<workflow name>.json¹ file in the project content on the local filesystem.

src/main/resources/workflows/Add a user to a user group.json

{
  "typeId": "com.vmw.vro.workflow",
  "spec": {
    "workflowId": "95808080808080808080808080808080F281808001175609873343b6bbd2e3eea"
  },
  "name": "Add a user to a user group",
  "id": "1fc7c318-e1ad-4c8a-a628-4d181f14ea5e",
  "description": "Adds one user as a member of a user group.",
  "projectId": "dbd131b6-9ed3-4309-9936-b7271675381f",
  "global": false
}

Export¶

To export the definition of a workflow catalog item from the VCF Automation server (pull the content), you need to add the workflow catalog item name as a list item of the workflow element in the content.yaml content descriptor file for the project.

Tip

Alternatively, if you want to export all workflow catalog item objects from the project on the VCF Automation server, you can configure the workflow element with no value (i.e. its value is null). For details, see the Content Filtering section.

Following is a sample listing of the content.yaml file for a project that exports only the Add a user to a user group workflow catalog item from the project on the VCF Automation server.

content.yaml

workflow:
  - Add a user to a user group
# ...

Import¶

When you import a workflow catalog item to a project on a VCF Automation server (push operation), Build Tools for VMware Aria matches the workflow object by its name (the name of the JSON definition file under src/main/resources/workflows in the project content on your local filesystem) and performs one of the following operations.

Warning

Note that for push operations for VCF Automation projects for All Apps organizations, Build Tools for VMware Aria uses the content filtering rules that you define in the content.yaml content descriptor file. For details, see the Content Filtering section.

If a workflow catalog item with the same name does not exist on the server, Build Tools for VMware Aria creates a new workflow catalog item with the details from the local project files.
If a workflow catalog item with the same name already exists on the server, Build Tools for VMware Aria updates the existing workflow catalog item object on the server with the definition from the local project.

The <workflow name> placeholder stands for the name of the workflow catalog item. ↩