User Guide

About Automation Catalog

When network automation is implemented with Automation Catalog, configuration changes are consistently applied across the infrastructure through pre-built specific tasks, making network management more efficient and easier to scale across more functional areas and departments within your enterprise. Users can also accelerate the roll out of new services and applications by creating new instantiations of an existing automation, with the ability to manually start or schedule single or recurring automations.

Accessing the Application

To access the application, select Automation Catalog in the left navbar of the IAP home page.

Once the Automation Catalog application displays, you can click the grid icon in the top toolbar to view all the automations available in Automation Catalog, or begin by clicking the appropriate icons to search or create an automation from the Get Started dialog box.

Automation Catalog | Home Page

Automation Catalog | Automations

Automation Catalog UI

The main user interface (UI) for Automation Catalog is described below along with summary descriptions for various features and functionality.

UI Label	UI Element	Description
1a	Plus (+) icon	Create new automation from side navigation.
1b	Plus (+) icon	Create new automation from blank card.
2	Collection icon	Navigate back to the collection view.
3	Automation title	Click to view/edit automation detail.
4	Stacked dots	Click to open modal to view/edit automation detail.
5	Play button	Click to run the automation.

Create New Automation

There are two ways to create an automation.

1. Click the plus (+) icon in the side navigation (1a).
2. Click the plus (+) icon on the blank card (1b).

After clicking the (+) icon, the Create Automation dialog will open. Once you to enter a name and description for your automation, click the Create button. You will be redirected to the collection view and the automation will be added to the collection list in the left sidebar.

Edit an Automation

There are three ways to edit automation details.

1. Click the title of the automation (3).
2. Click the stacked dots button to edit details (4).
3. Click the name of your automation in the left side navigation.

Modify Automation Details

Within an automation, you can change multiple attributes.

UI Label	Description
1	Access management. Used to set automation permissions. For more information, see Automation Permissions below.
2	Actions to delete or export an automation.
3	Required. The Automation bound to the item .
4	Optional. The Form bound to the item .
5	View and edit the current form assigned to this automation in Form Builder.
6	Create a new form in Form Builder.
7	Save changes to the automation.
8	Activate this switch to run an automation on a schedule. For more information, see Schedule an Automation below.
9	Run the automation (outside of a scheduled run). Note: Can also run the automation from the play button in the collection view.

Note: If working to access your form data from the automation canvas, please see Querying Form Data below.

Automation Permissions

Click the cog icon at the top of the Automation Details page to open the Access Management panel, which allows you to assign user groups authorized to change and/or view an automation. By default, no group permissions are assigned, which grants all users permission to change, view, and execute an automation.

• To assign Read-Write permissions to a group, use the search bar to locate the appropriate group. Once all group selections are made, click Save.
• Groups with Write permissions are authorized to change, view, and execute an automation while Read-only groups have permission only to view and execute.
• If a Write group or Read-only group is set, then the counterpart group must also be defined; in other words, a Write group cannot be configured without at least one group specified as Read-only and vice versa.

Note: A warning message will appear if modifying these permissions will negatively impact the current user.

Run an Automation

There are two ways to run an automation.

Method 1

1. Press the Run Manually button (see image above).

Method 2

1. From the Automations page, click the stacked dots menu button.

2. Select Run.

   

3. Input the form data, if required. Then click Run.

   

Schedule an Automation

To run an automation on a schedule, activate the Schedule switch slider. Once the switch is activated, set the schedule properties.

Property	Description
Start on	Required. This will be the date of the first instance. Must be set in the future.
Run At	Required. Must be set in conjunction with the Start on property. This is the time to run the first instance.
Repeat	Optional. Set this property to run the automation on a repeat schedule.
Form Data	Optional. Set this property if you want the schedule to pass in formData to the automation.

Example

The following is an automation that runs every evening at 10:30pm (from July 4th onward) and passes in the following data to an automation.

{
  "formData": {
    "name": "paul"
  }
}

Querying Form Data

The form data is passed into a workflow through a formData field, which is available as a job variable in Workflow Builder. You can use the query task in Workflow Builder to access data that is stored in different containers within the formData object.

Of note, the formData object will not appear as a job variable option initially.

It must be added manually using the EDIT button to the right of the job options.

Once the formData option is added manually, it will be available as a job option in other tasks throughout the automation.

Example

The following is an example of querying form data on the automation canvas.