7.1

Managing Workflows 2
A workow is a series of actions and decisions that you run sequentially. Orchestrator provides a library of
workows that perform common management tasks according to best practices. Orchestrator also provides
libraries of the individual actions that the workows perform.
Workows combine actions, decisions, and results that, when performed in a particular order, complete a
specic task or a specic process in a virtual environment. Workows perform tasks such as provisioning
virtual machines, backing up, performing regular maintenance, sending emails, performing SSH operations,
managing the physical infrastructure, and other general utility operations. Workows accept inputs
according to their function. You can create workows that run according to dened schedules, or that run if
certain anticipated events occur. Information can be provided by you, by other users, by another workow
or action, or by an external process such as a Web service call from an application. Workows perform some
validation and ltering of information before they run.
Workows can call upon other workows. For example, you can reuse in several dierent workows a
workow that starts a virtual machine.
You create workows by using the Orchestrator client interface’s integrated development environment
(IDE), that provides access to the workow library and the ability to run workows on the workow engine.
The workow engine can also take objects from external libraries that you plug in to Orchestrator. This
ability allows you to customize processes or implement functions that third-party applications provide.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Key Concepts of Workows,” on page 14
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“Standard Workows in the Workow Library,” on page 16
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“Set User Permissions on a Workow,” on page 16
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“Run a Workow,” on page 17
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“Respond to a Request for a User Interaction,” on page 18
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“Scheduling Workows,” on page 19
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“Use Workow Version History,” on page 20
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“Restore Deleted Workows,” on page 21
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“Export a Workow,” on page 21
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“Import a Workow,” on page 21
VMware, Inc.
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