Working with Subscription Event Based vRO Workflows and ABX Actions in vRA8
As an IT professional, I have had to deal with my fair share of subscription event based vRO workflows and ABX actions. One of the frustrating aspects of working with these is that you often want to be able to develop in vRO using the vRA payload without having to constantly ask vRA to create a deployment just to push the payload downstream to vRO. In this blog post, I will discuss a recent approach that I have taken to overcome this challenge.
The Challenge
One of the challenges of working with subscription event based vRO workflows and ABX actions is that you want to be able to test and develop these workflows without having to constantly trigger vRA deployments. This can be time-consuming and can lead to a lot of unnecessary deployment activity. Additionally, if you are working on a large-scale vRO environment, the sheer number of deployments can become overwhelming.
The Approach
To overcome this challenge, I have been using a recent approach that involves triggering various vRA event subscriptions and storing the payload. This allows me to recall the payload and use it as much as I want to test and develop my vRO workflows and actions without having to touch vRA at all.
The Process
To use this approach, you will need to first download a package that includes three workflows, one action, and a configuration element with a path. Once you have imported the package into vRO, you can create an event subscription in vRA8 that will trigger the ‘Save vRA inputProperties’ workflow. When the event subscription executes, the input payload will be saved into the configuration element under a new attribute!
To use the saved configuration, you can use the included action, ‘LoadSavedInputPropertyDefinitions’ and pass its output into your workflow, mapping its output to your inputProperties payload. You can specify the project and the event that you want to use, as per the example in the included workflow ‘Simple Example Of Using Saved Data.’
Benefits
The benefits of using this approach are numerous. Firstly, it allows you to test and develop vRO workflows and actions without having to constantly trigger vRA deployments. This can save a significant amount of time and reduce the number of unnecessary deployments. Additionally, it allows you to use the vRA payload directly in your vRO workflows and actions, without having to modify the payload or create custom connectors.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using subscription event based vRO workflows and ABX actions can be a challenge, but there is a recent approach that can help overcome this challenge. By triggering various vRA event subscriptions and storing the payload, you can recall the payload and use it as much as you want to test and develop your vRO workflows and actions without having to touch vRA at all. This approach can save time, reduce the number of deployments, and allow you to use the vRA payload directly in your vRO workflows and actions.