What is a workflow?

Workflow

A workflow represents a process. Each workflow consists of at least one task.

The Workflows, All Workflows view shows the workflows created in or imported to NSP. If the Status field shows PUBLISHED, the workflow is ready to run.

Double-click on a workflow to open an Info page. From the Info page, choose from the drop-down list to navigate to workflow-specific pages, such as the YAML definition and Flow diagram.

Input form

The input form is one of the pages available from the Info page of a workflow.

The user input parameters required by a workflow are declared in the input form. The value of each parameter is a JSON-compliant type such as number or string, a dictionary, or a list. It can also be an expression to retrieve a value from a task context, or any of the mentioned types containing inline expressions.

When the workflow is executed, the configured input form is presented in the Create Execution form. You can use the JSON schema to create form properties such as lists, choices, and fields with autocomplete.

If the developer has included execution mode options in the workflow script, the user input form includes the option for the operator to enable the mode. The following options can be included:

• Dry Run: execute the workflow without pushing any information to the network.

• Compare: execute the workflow and provide a summary of what has changed, or, if Dry Run is also enabled, what would be changed if you set Dry Run to false

• Force: execute the workflow with predefined user input values.

See the Workflows tutorial on the Network Developer Portal for detailed information.

Tags

Tags are used to filter and group objects.

If a workflow is compliant with a set of format requirements, such as Service Fulfillment or Kafka triggers, a tag must be used to indicate what the workflow is configured for. For example, for a Kafka trigger to launch a workflow, the workflow must have a KafkaTrigger tag.

You can add tags to group and filter workflows according to your needs, for example, add a vendor tag to easily find workflows for the vendor’s NEs.

Deleting workflows

You can delete a workflow from the Table row actions menu; see “How do I navigate a list?” in the NSP User Guide. If there is a Kafka Trigger associated with a workflow, the Kafka Trigger must be removed before the workflow can be deleted.