Workflows

NAVIGATION  Modules > Automation > Workflows

SECURITY  Automation > View Tasks & Scripts

SECURITY  Automation > Run Tasks & Scripts

SECURITY  Automation > Edit Tasks & Scripts

VSA 10 facilitates automated workflows, which automatically remediate problems on your endpoints. You can set triggers and configure actions to bring back services, run scripts, alert on conditions, and much more. The built-in workflow automation is triggered when a certain event occurs from your monitored devices, which triggers notifications that share information about how to fix issues automatically.

This article describes the process to create, view, and manage your workflows.

Overview

From the left navigation menu in VSA 10, navigate to Automation > Workflows.

The Workflows page displays a list of all workflows created by all users in your environment.

Click any header to sort the displayed records in ascending or descending order by the column's value.

Field Description
Name Displays the name of the workflow.
Description Displays the workflow description, if added.
Trigger type Displays the workflow trigger type: Notification or Ad-hoc and Scheduled.
Trigger Displays the trigger of the workflow execution.
Context Displays which devices are affected by the workflow execution.

NOTE  Workflows of the Notification trigger type automatically apply to all devices.
Status Displays the status of the workflow: Active, meaning the workflow is monitoring for changes, or Inactive.
Last modified date Displays when the workflow configuration was last modified by a user.
Last executed date Displays when the workflow was last triggered and executed.
Next execution date Displays when the workflow is scheduled to next be triggered automatically, if configured.
Execution time

Displays the length of the execution.

Hovering over a workflow displays options to run, edit, clone, or delete the workflow as available.

Page features

Feature Description
Filter by Enables you to filter the list. Refer to Applying filters.
Table Options Enables you to show/hide a column in the list.
Actions Enables you to do the following:
Create Workflow Enables you to create a workflow. Refer to Creating and editing a workflow.

You can filter the workflows by the following criteria using the Filter by drop-down menu:

Filter Description
All statuses Displays all the active and inactive workflows.
Active Displays only the active workflows.
Inactive Displays only the inactive workflows.
Trigger type Filters the workflows list based on the trigger type selected.
Trigger Filters the workflows list based on the sub-trigger type if Notification is selected as Trigger type.
Context Filters the workflows list based on the selected context. After selecting the type of context, select the context in the second drop-down menu.
Last modified Filters the workflows list based on when the workflows were last modified.
Last executed Filters the workflows list based on when the workflows were last executed.
Next execution Filters the workflows list based on when the workflows are scheduled to be executed.
Execution time Filters the workflows list based on execution times.

Click the Filter by drop-dow menu and select the appropriate filters.

Click Apply to filter the workflows list by the selected criteria, or click Cancel to close out of the filter drop-down menu.

You can also enter keywords in the search bar to search for specific workflows. Press Enter on your keyboard to execute the search and narrow the list of results.

The following actions are available from the Actions drop-down menu:

Action Description
Create from VSA9 Agent Procedures This tool gives VSA 9 users transitioning to VSA 10 a better understanding of how any Agent Procedures will be represented as workflows, allowing you to import and evaluate existing Agent Procedures from VSA 9.

In VSA 9, right-click any specific Agent Procedure or folder containing multiple Agent Procedures and choose Export Procedure. Save the file to the suggested XML format.

When importing any Agent Procedure XML file into VSA 10, the translator tool will parse the file content and present the Agent Procedures available for import in a list. The tool analyzes how compatible the Agent Procedure is with VSA 10 and displays a compatibility score of 1 through 5. This information provides an overview and understanding of what specific Agent Procedure features are currently available in workflow actions and conditions. Select the Agent Procedures you wish to import and click Continue.

Any selected Agent Procedure within the imported XML file will generate a workflow to be reviewed. The tool can be used to evaluate the currently supported actions and conditions translated from the Agent Procedures. The tool will also show any action or condition not yet supported by denoting it in red and rendering the workflow as inactive, unable to be activated. The workflow can, however, be edited or modified to achieve compatibility.
Create from Template Enables you to create a workflow from a pre-built template.

Complete the following steps:

  1. On the Workflows page, click Create Workflow. Or, click an existing workflow to open the editor.
  2. On the Details page, enter a name (required) and description (optional).
  3. If you turn on the Active toggle in the Status section, the workflow will be ready to trigger as soon as it is created. If you want to disable the workflow, turn the toggle off.
  4. In the Maximum execution time section, enter how many hours the workflow should take to execute its steps before it is forced to stop.
  5. Click Next to start defining or editing the workflow.
  6. If creating a new workflow, you'll be prompted to establish which trigger will activate this workflow. Each individual trigger can activate one workflow.

    7. EXAMPLE  For example, the Stop Service trigger will be activated when VSA 10 receives any notification that the services are stopped. The notifications are defined by endpoint policies. If no policy is defined, no notification will appear, and no workflow will be triggered.

  7. If you wish to take additional actions when the trigger occurs, click the New Step button at the bottom of the workflow canvas as required.
  8. Ending the workflow as a Success or Failure allows you to utilize the action for the purpose of error handling.
  9. All available actions are meant to perform a task or run a script on the endpoint with the exception of the condition action. A condition allows you to add rules to the target or filter out specific services, organizations, devices, or custom fields. This special step allows you to define who or what the workflow will target in a more granular manner (if/then route). To apply a condition and configure its rules, click Condition at the top of the Choose an action pane.
  10. When finished configuring the workflow, click Save to create the workflow.

Configuration page indicators

At the bottom of configuration pages, the indicators display the configuration statuses, as follows:

Indicator Status
This configuration page is currently open for the first time.
This configuration page is not currently open and has not been configured yet.
This configuration page is currently open, and all required fields are complete.
This configuration page is not currently open, and all required fields are complete.
This configuration page is currently open, and required fields must be populated before saving.
This configuration page is not currently open, and required fields must be populated before saving.
  1. Navigate to Automation > Workflows.
  2. Click a workflow in the list.
  3. Click New Step.

    4. NOTE  You will need to navigate to the bottom of the workflow canvas to see the New Step button. In a long workflow canvas, zooming out may be useful.

    The Choose an action pane will open on the right side of the page.

  4. In the System section, click Set Custom Field Value.
  5. From the Custom Field drop-down menu, select a custom field.
  6. From the Context drop-down menu, select System, Organization, or Global.

    NOTE  The context option will change based on the custom field selected.

  7. From the Operation drop-down menu, select Set Value, Set to empty, or Reset to default value.
  8. Click Confirm. The custom field is added to your workflow.

Workflow examples

EXAMPLE  In this example, a High CPU usage notification will trigger the workflow when it exceeds preset limits.

Once a trigger is added, it is displayed as part of the workflow schema. You will see the option to add a step in the chain of actions. Click New Step to proceed.

The Choose an action pane on the right side of the page displays available actions for the selected trigger type. You can make use of condition steps to execute different actions based on the outcome of your logical statements.

In this example, because of the configured condition, if a high CPU usage notification on the device is triggered and the name for the top process is Sublime, then the process should be killed.

You can add more actions based on the outcome that results from the first action, either successful or unsuccessful.

EXAMPLE  In this example, conditions are set to restart certain service on one particular device. If the condition Service Name equal to btserv is removed, then the action to start service will be executed on all devices in the group ESXi.

NOTE  To start required services in required groups, these blocks with conditions should be chained as IF statements.

As in the preceding example, once the conditions are configured, you can configure the actions: action to be performed when the condition is true (Start Service in this example) and action to be performed when the condition is false. To define these actions, click New Step underneath the green circle (the condition is true) and New Step under the red circle (the condition is false).

Using worfklows to onboard new devices