Creating Actions

The following scenarios will guide you through the creation process of three different types of Actions:

What are Actions?

Actions are pre-defined tasks for executing single operations as part of the Workflow. They simplify constructing Workflows by providing reusable, ready-to-use, and tested building blocks for frequently needed operations.

Actions cover different areas of critical data center operations and help you to automate simple and complex tasks. Examples of simple actions are checking file system operations or permission on Windows, UNIX and Linux. Some of the more complex actions include creating websites, web applications, and application pools for various platforms like IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, or Websphere.

Because Actions are parametrized with prompts for input values, they can be applied in various workflows.

Structure of Actions

An Action consists of all of the following categories:

Furthermore, most Actions specify a rollback task that will be executed if the workflow containing the Action fails.

Note: Actions are stored in the Automation Engine. Although they could be built in the Automation Engine directly, you would need to create many objects manually. The Action Builder provides means to create a skeleton for new Actions in a comfortable, integrated user interface.

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.

For example, the Tomcat Action Pack (which is available at https://marketplace.automic.com/) lets you automate application deployments to a Tomcat application server. The Tomcat Action Pack contains the following actions: