Walkthrough of the Process Assembly Perspective

The Automic Web Interfaceis organized in perspectives that reflect user roles. A perspective is an area that contains the data and functions to which a particular user role should have access. The Process Assembly perspective is the main (although not the only) working area of developers and object designers. Here you create and configure objects and write scripts to extend the object configuration options.

The Process Assembly perspective has the following main elements:

The area on the left is the navigation pane. It contains various tabs.

Explorer

The Explorer shows the folders where objects are stored. Administrator users can grant or deny Users and User Groups permissions to objects at folder level. Some folders are created automatically during installation (for example, DASHBOARDS or <No Folder>). If you have the necessary permissions, you can create folders.

<No Folder> is a security feature. It is the fallback in the following situations:

• You import objects from a different Client or system and the target Client does not contain the same folders as the source Client. The objects for which there is not a corresponding folder are stored here.
• You delete objects that contain other objects (a Workflow or a Schedule, for example). Those objects cannot be deleted and are stored here.

In the Explorer list, the following columns are displayed by default:

• Name

  Folder or object name

• Title

  Optional, descriptive title to help identify the purpose of the folder or object

• Type

• Platform

  You can only assign individual Agents to a group if they all have the same platform.

• Last Modified

• Opened by

• Version

The following columns are also available but hidden by default:

• Archive Key 1 and Archive Key 2

  Archive keys are keywords you assign to the object. Later on you can perform searches or you can filter objects using them:

  • Archive Key 1 is limited to max. 60 characters

  • Archive Key 2 is limited to max. 20 characters

The Explorer also gives you access to the following functions:

• My Favorites

  Add the objects that you regularly work with to your favorites to find them as quickly as possible. The objects are not moved from its source location. Moving objects to your favorites simply creates a link to those objects. You can perform all the actions that you are entitled to also from this folder.

• My Catalog

  My Catalog is the personal, interactive dashboard of operators. It provides real-time data and links to all the objects they are entitled to work with.

  System administrators configure and maintain the My Catalog dashboards. When they create one, they add to this folder the objects to which the operator has privileges and rights.

• Recently Used

  This list contains the 50 objects you last worked with. Right-click any object to open the context menu that gives you access to all the functions available for that object, according to your user privileges.

  The only exception is importing objects. You cannot import objects because the items in this list are links to the actual objects.

• Recycled Bin

• Transport Case

  Objects can be exchanged among Automation Engine systems or individual clients within the same Automation Engine system. Adding objects to the transport case in the originating system is the first step. Once here, you unload its contents and finally load it in the target system/client.

Version Control

Version Control allows you to create and manage multiple versions of an object. It lets you export and import versions to and from a remote repository and rollback changes to a previous version. It also gives you access to the commit history of the Client. You can synchronize repositories across multiple nodes of a system to access your data and ensure a collaborative working environment for all developers and object designers.

Packs

This list contains the Packs that are available to you.

For more information, see:

• Adding to Favorites
• Configuring the User Catalog
• Object Links
• Deleting Objects and Folders
• Transport Case
• Version Control
• About Actions, Packs and Plug-ins

When you select an object or a pack, the toolbar displays the name of the folder where it is stored. It also enables the buttons that are relevant for the selected object. For example, if a folder contains a Job and a VARA object, the Execute button is not enabled because one of the objects (VARA) is not executable.

The following buttons are available:

• Add Object and Add Folder open the Add ... dialogs.

• Open

  Opens the selected object in edit mode

• Delete

  Moves the selected object to the Recycle Bin

• Execute

  Executes the selected object immediately. Click the arrow to display more execution options

• Executions

  Opens a list with historical data on the execution of the selected object

• Last Report

  Opens the Reports window displaying the latest report of the selected object

• Last Monitor

  Opens the latest monitor of the selected executable object

• More button

  Expand it to access more functions that are available to the selected folder or object

• Details button

  Opens a pane with detailed information about the selected object

• Export Table

  Exports the content of the list as comma-separated values in a CSV file

• Refresh button

  Refreshes the view

The Details pane is displayed when you click the Details button in the toolbar. This pane provides the most important data on the object that i currently selected in the list. It is organized in collapsible sections:

• General

  Most important setting on the object General page.

• History

  User who created the object and user(s) who modified it as well as how often.

• Runtime

  Estimated runtime for the object

• Authorizations

  Authorizations set on the selected object

• Tips and Tricks in AWI
• Understanding the Object Types in Automic Automation
• Adding Objects
• Defining Automic Automation Objects
• Searching for Objects
• Working with Objects
• Exporting Tables to CSV
• Executing Objects
• Monitoring Tasks