We will now showcase how to integrate Orchestrator workflows in vRealize Automation. We will learn how to create a vRA Catalog item that will run a workflow when requested.
In order to use an Orchestrator workflow as a vRA Catalog item, you should have the following vRA items configured:
- Entitlements
- Services
- Business groups
To configure these items, please refer to the link shown in the introduction to this chapter or take a look at the official VMware documentation for vRA.
We will use the example workflow 00.00 BasicWorkflow to add to the vRA catalog.
This recipe is divided into three parts.
By default, the Xaas tab is not visible, so the first step is to make it appear:
- Log in to vRA as an Infrastructure admin.
- Navigate to Administration | Users & Groups | Custom Groups.
- Click on Finish.
- Give the group a name and then assign it the role of XaaS Architect.
- Click on Next and select a group or user to assign to this group.
- Log out and log in with the user that you specified in step 5.
The XaaS tab should now be visible.
We will now add a simple Orchestrator workflow as a vRA Catalog item. We will add the example workflow 00.00 BasicWorkflow.
- Log in to vRA with a user who is a service architect.
- Navigate to Design | XaaS | XaaS Blueprint and click on New.
- Select the workflow
00.00 BasicWorkflow. On the left-hand side, you will see all in- and out-parameters of the workflow. Click on Next.
- You can now change the display name of the workflow as well as modify the Description and the Version fields. Click on Next.
- The Blueprint form allows you to modify the presentation screen. A detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this book, so see section How it works... for more details. For now, just click on Next.
- You are now asked what you would like to provision. As we did not define any custom resources, you can only choose No provisioning. Click on Finish.
We will now publish this workflow and then add it to the catalog:
- Navigate to Design | XaaS | XaaS Blueprint, click on the service Blueprint that you created in the last section, and then select Publish (the green-colored tick).
- Now, navigate to Administration | Catalog Management | Catalog Items. The service Blueprint can now be seen. Click on it and select Configure (a gray gear icon).
- You can now change the icon that will be displayed with the Catalog item. This icon will always be an Orchestrator Item, and it has no connection to the workflow item in the Orchestrator Client.
- Select the Status as Active to make it usable in the catalog.
- Select a Service to attach (not <None>) and then click on OK:
- Now, go to the Catalog tab and take a look at the result:
You can now Request this Catalog item, which results in the workflow being executed. Check the Orchestrator Client for the result.
This is a very simple integration of a workflow with vRA, but it shows the power of the whole concept and the possibilities.
In this example, we have just used a simple workflow that doesn't interact with any infrastructure. In the Managing AD users with vRA recipe in this chapter, we will use a more elaborate setup; however, the principle is the same for all workflow interactions.
If the workflow you are executing uses a customer interaction, you can find and start the interaction by clicking on your inbox.