About Packs and Plug-ins

This page includes the following:

What are Packs?

The currently supported plug-ins are known as Packs. These plug-ins consist of Automation Engine objects and may include CDA-specific objects.

What are Action Packs?

Action Packs are outbound integrations with third-party products such as Amazon S3, Docker, and Tomcat for automation purposes. They group actions that are related to each other (for example, Windows File System Actions) and are always imported and exported as a single unit to an existing CDA client.

Pack Folder Structure

<PACKAGE_NAME>
Top-level folder containing all Action Pack content
ACTIONS

An Action contains workflows for the Pack that has been created (or a link to the referenced workflow).
CONFIG

Contains static VARA objects or other objects that are used to store the configuration
DOCUMENTATION

Documentation objects containing license and pack documentation
RESOURCES

Pack resources that are used across multiple Actions.
INTERPRETERS

Storage object containing binaries of external interpreters
LIBS
Storage object containing binaries such as Java JAR files or compiled libraries
SCRIPTS
Storage objects containing external, interpreted scripts
SOURCE
Contains the internals for each Action such as sub-workflows, jobs, scripts objects, VARA objects, and so on.
TEMPLATES
Contains template workflows, which are registered in the UC_OBJECT_TEMPLATE. Actions from other Packs the current Pack depends on can also be incorporated into this Folder.

Important! From version 12.3, Action Packs can be imported and exported in two different formats: .xml (old, compatible with former versions of CDA) and .json (new, compatible with v12.3 and higher). You can define which format to use in the PACKS_COMPATIBILITY_MODE parameter of the UC_CLIENT_SETTINGS (Plugin Manager) or by adding the corresponding option in the apm download command (Package Manager).

For more information, see:

UC_CLIENT_SETTINGS - Various Client Settings
Getting Help and Further Commands (CLI) - Download Packs

ARA Application Packs

You can create an Application Pack out of an existing Application and export/import the Pack via Plugin Manager/Package Manager or, alternatively, via a code editor integrated with GIT and the REST client.

When you create an Application Pack, the serialized content of the CDA Applications and its related components is stored in the ARA.APPLICATIONS folder of the Process Assembly perspective. The Application Packs are stored under PACKAGES in the same view. The CDA content (Application, Components...) is saved in a storage object of the Application Pack.

For more information, see Creating Application Packs.

Types of Packs

Packs, Action Packs and Application Packs are classified into categories, which help users identify their purpose. The category of a Pack is displayed in the Packs view of the Administration perspective.

Application Packs always have the Application category. Packs and Action Packs may have, among others, the following categories: Network, Download, SCM, Versioning and so on.

You can define your own category for custom Action Packs. Category types are defined in the METADATA VARA object of a Pack.