User's Manual

Understanding Orchestration
13-4 Active System Manager User Guide, Release 7.1
Selecting Custom Operations
While building Orchestrations based on custom operations or prior to executing custom operations
explicitly, you are required to provide certain parameter values for selected custom operations. Instead of
manually entering these parameter values, you can choose to select pre-defined values from custom
operation’s Value Source as defined in the Resource Adapter definition.
In Orchestration, a Value Source refers to the Primary Source field. The Primary Source field displays
context sensitive list of values dynamically in a drop-down list, which is populated with possible values
retrieved from a specific value source in corresponding operation defined in the RA. The Sub Type is the
Secondary Source field that further categorizes values based on the selected Primary Source.
For Example: When Operation Center Elements are selected as Primary value source, the associated
elements such as Host, Cluster, Datastore, Pool and Volume are available to be chosen as value for the
custom operation parameter values.
Note The Operation Center Elements displayed in Figure 13-2, are the pre-defined values for
provisioning values. Rather than entering provisioning values manually, the Active System
Manager facilitates you to choose the required value from Operation Center Elements’ element list
(Host, Cluster, Datastore, Pool and Volume), and supply the same to provisioning as values.
Figure 13-2 Value Source_Example
Selecting Context-Sensitive Values
To select context-sensitive values, perform the following steps:
1. While creating Orchestration or updating Orchestration during execution, drag an operation to include
it into a step.
The Specify Input Values dialog box displays, containing the following two panes:
• Parameters Pane—Contains general execution details such as operation names and the Value field
for entering values against input parameters.
You can either enter these parameter values in Value manually or by selecting a value from the list
of possible values from Possible Values pane.
Note The star pre-fixed in the icons in the Name column of the Parameters section indicates mandatory
values that you must enter.
• Possible Values Pane Displays all elements contained in selected Value Source.
This panel allows you to choose values from the Primary Source and the Secondary Source
drop-down lists.
Note For information on Value Sources applicable on custom operations, see the “Working with Resource
Adapters” section on page 9-16.