Use Case: Aligning Processes with Business Schedules

Automating operations involves sequencing work and scheduling. This use case describes how a major utility automates a complex, cross-platform IT process. This process is recreated in Automic Automation as a Workflow, exposing several sequencing and scheduling capabilities, such as cross-platform environment definitions, orchestration, Calendar conditions, PromptSets, CALL objects and breakpoints. The use case includes both concepts and demos and brings all of these features together in a single automated stream combining both sequencing, and scheduling capabilities.

This is a short summary of the content of this use case:

1. Overview

   This module/video introduces the use case on which the rest of the modules/videos elaborate and demonstrate: A Workflow combines several integrations (Airflow, SAP, SQL Server, Kubernetes and so forth) to synchronize operations across multiple environments.

   The video explains the Automic Automation's sequencing and orchestrating capabilities that the use case will demonstrate:

   • Extensive integration capabilities, including cloud and containerized environments.

   • Orchestrating capabilities of Workflows.

   • Advanced scheduling through Calendar conditions.

   • Interactive customization of task configuration parameters through PromptSets.

   • Additional capabilities: Conditions, breakpoints, CALL objects and reporting.

2. Supported Environments

   Automic Automation grows organically with market evolutions and currently provides seamless integrations to well-established environments (databases, ERPs, Web Services, SOAP, etc.) and to more recent evolutions (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, etc.). Automic Automation's Workflows orchestrate processes irrespective of their infrastructure.

   This module/video explains the roles and responsibilities of administrators, automation designers and operators in the orchestration process and how AWI reflects this. It also provides an overview of Automic Automation's integration capabilities.

3. Orchestration

   This module/video explains how Workflows orchestrate processes, outlines Workflow properties and task properties (where a task is an object that is inserted in a Workflow and that can have its own properties when executed from a particular Workflow). Calendar conditions, for example, are task properties that determine when tasks execute withing the Workflow. Conditions (pre and post conditions) are also task properties that determine what should happen next in the Workflow, based on the execution status of the task within the Workflow. Finally, PromptSets and Variables on tasks are also properties that make the Workflow execution customizable and interactive.

4. Calendar Conditions

   This module/video shows how to configure the Calendar Condition requirements (that is, the scheduling parameters) of the Workflow. It explains Calendars and Calendar Events and demonstrates how to configure a Calendar with Calendar Conditions to schedule specifically the Workflow explained in this use case..

5. PromptSets

   This module/video explains what PromptSets are and how they work and it demonstrates how to define PromptSets in the use case Workflow.

6. Other Functions

   This module/video explains what CALL objects are (Notifications) and how they work. It also describes an important function to introduce manual control to the Workflow execution: Breakpoints. It also demonstrates how to configure both and what happens when the Workflow is executed.

7. Reports

   Automic Automation provides various reports for each platform and task type. This module/video shows and explains the reports produced when executing the use case Workflow: Agent log (PLOG), Activation (ACT) report, Report (REP), Step Lists (SSTP) for AWS S3 Jobs.

Useful Links

For a short overview of the available Automic Automation Cloud Integrations and links to the corresponding product documentation, see Cloud Integrations.