SmartOps Core Platform 8.0

Overview

SmartOps 8.0 introduces the MVP version of Automation Story 2.0. The Automation Story framework will be a platform for enterprise business process automation using pre-built building blocks from the Automation Library. Customers will be able to achieve automation without requiring an automation development team; domain experts will be able to build automations bringing in speed and competitiveness for enterprises.

Automation Story will enable automation engineers to orchestrate an end-to-end automation using building blocks like SmartOps workflows, SmartOps integrations, logical and control operators for branching/decision making and support for different types of triggers. The Automation Story framework is built for scalability, resiliency and role-based access.

In this release, we also introduce a single global automation library available across all products, environments and regions, to discover and reuse automation components. To begin with, users can now contribute Micro Actions to the Automation Library.

Automation Story 2.0 is a high-level automation framework that can combine different components into an end-to-end automation flow. In this release, we introduce an MVP of Automation Story 2.0, with select features from the below future state. In this release the current Design Studio is modified to support creation of automation stories, but the future state will be a new redesigned user experience for creating automation stories.

Automation designers can use the below building blocks to orchestrate an end-to-end automation.

• SmartOps Workflows (built using Micro Actions)
• SmartOps RHub Flows (for pre-built or custom integrations)
• Logical components for branching/decisions in Automation Story
  • Boolean comparison
  • String - Equals, Equals Ignorecase, Regex
  • Number - Equals, Greater Than, Less Than
• Automation Story control components
  • Start (can embed inputs)
  • End
  • Wait for an external trigger (can embed inputs)
  • Wait for callback

The Automation Story can be triggered by direct invocation by API or by trigger events, webhooks, scheduled/polled events.

How to create an Automation Story?  

Users can build an Automation Story in the enhanced SmartOps Design Studio. It is a 2-step process.

• Step 1 - Create an Automation Story definition.
• Step 2 - Build an Automation Story from the definition, by mapping instances, setting priority groups for SmartOps workflow components (if needed) and providing inputs required for Automation Story execution

An Automation Story Definition can be used to build multiple Automation Stories.

The Automation Story Orchestrator will handle the execution of Automation Story - step-by-step execution, callbacks from async steps, session management, logging, resilience by retrying, execution history and traceability using SmartOps Correlation ID.

Automation Story Execution 

Using SmartOps Workflow in an Automation Story

Here are some new features introduced to enable a SmartOps Workflow to be used in an Automation Story

1. Resilience with retry options

   Any SmartOps Workflow can be configured to allow retry, based on the workflow designer’s discretion. For example, you may not want to allow retry for a workflow that updates information. But a workflow that retrieves information may be configured to allow retry execution in case of any Workflow invocation failure.

   

   When such a SmartOps Workflow is used in an Automation Story, the automation designer will have an option to configure the retry settings. In case of any Workflow invocation failure, the Automation Story will retry the execution as configured.

   

2. Specify input fields to be shown when invoked from Automation Story

   A SmartOps workflow can have multiple input fields. The Workflow designer can specify which of those are required when an Automation Story invokes this Workflow. Only these input fields will be shown to an automation designer who uses this workflow as an Automation Story building block

   

Users with Automation Library Admin role can contribute Micro Actions to Automation Library through API. In future, it will be possible to do this through UI.

The Automation Library will now be a single global library available across all environments, regions, and products. When an Automation Library admin contributes a component to Automation Library, users across all environments, regions and products will be able to access it. For example, an AIOps automation engineer can contribute a ServiceNow Micro Action to the Automation Library, which can then be discovered and re-used by any SmartOps user.

This release will feature the SmartOps Correlation component for traceability using a single SmartOps Correlation ID across these components - Automation Story, SmartOps Workflow Orchestrator, PWF and iHub. With the introduction of this, any SmartOps component can be integrated with correlation for end-to-end tracking using APIs.

Enabling simplified packaging and faster deployment using Helm Charts which helps faster build and deployments, with less human interventions/errors, fully automated QA build/deployment and one click deployment for higher regions.

As part of having improved security and dependency analysis at code level, SmartOps now has code dependency analysis for Java and Python repos and image vulnerability scans for SmartOps containers.

To enable automated infrastructure management in Cloud Platforms, this release introduces Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform Tool for Cloud Services on Azure.

• (7045) Navistar-Same file displayed more than once in IE screen
• (7392) RPFC AP : Invoice duplicated in IE against a single entry in DU
• (7424) Email Workflow is not working (Lock wait timeout exceeded)
• (7621) Platform not supporting multiple scheduler adapters

Release Artifacts

Deployment Artifacts

For Support and more enquiries you can write a mail to us on feedback.smartops@ust-global.com