Execution, the Results Area, and Debugging
Workflows can be run using the blue “Execute” button in the far upper right. When a Workflow is executed, the system scans the Workflow’s structure to determine what information is required from the user as inputs and presents a modal screen requesting it. Once this data is supplied, the screen scrolls to the Results area at the very bottom of the Step List and displays the results.
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The Raw Output section displays the raw JSON returned by the ACP system. The details of this area are beyond the scope of this document, but this data can provide additional insight into the behavior of the Workflow.
Workflow URL and External Execution
Once saved, every Workflow is assigned a distinct URL which can be used to execute it remotely by POST’ing data to it. This URL can be found by navigating to the header area of the Workflow and clicking on the ‘More options’ drop-down below the description area.
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A modal window appears which displays the Workflow URL and the user-given variables required for the Workflow to run.
Export
Workflows can be exported in JSON format by navigating to the header area of the Workflow and clicking the ‘More options’ drop-down below the description area.
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The Workflow JSON will be downloaded through the browser. This exported JSON can be saved as a backup, shared with coworkers, or sent to 6connect Support for assistance.
Initiator Conditions
The 6connect ACP system uses “initiator conditions” as a sort of pre-routing system to determine, based on user-given data, which step is executed first. This is particularly useful for data unification processes. For example, a Workflow can be configured to accept both a Customer Name or a Customer Id, but if a Customer Name is provided to start at a step which looks up the Customer Id before proceeding to the main work.
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When the workflow is executed each condition is evaluated against the user-given data, from top to bottom, in order. One a matching condition is found the Workflow immediately proceeds to the indicated step.
Iteration Options
Each Step has an “Iteration Options” section which can be used to execute a single step multiple times.
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In the case of a more complicated JSON structure (ex: [ { id: 123}, {id : 321 } ] ), the entire object will be provided to the variable. If only part of the structure is required, it can be accessed using the same semantics used to navigate JSON trees elsewhere. In the above example “{id: 123}” will be passed to the input by default, but if the input is configured with “id”, then only the value “123” will be passed in. Likewise, if the object contained an array, then “2.id” will select the third item’s “id” parameter.
Javascript Functions
While many API automation tasks can be completed by invoking endpoints in order and passing identifiers from one service to another, many tasks will require some data processing to correctly accomplish their goals. To assist in this ACP offers the ability to include user-written Javascript functions to handle these data manipulation tasks.
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This variable will be now be populated with the results of the function whenever this step is run.
Sub-Steps
Each Workflow Step has an optional Sub-steps section. This area is initially empty, but can be populated with sub-steps to create a Workflow within a Workflow. This Inner Workflow will be executed once for each item produced by the parent Step. For example, if the parent Step produces an array of five objects, then the Inner Workflow in the Sub-steps section will be executed five times, once for each object.
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Each Inner Workflow can have, if needed, Sub-steps of is own, creating an Inner-Inner Workflow. There is no limit to how many Workflows deep this can go.
Generic Connectors
The Generic Connector system is designed to allow ACP to support API-providing systems which do not have a predefined built-in connector. For example, there may be a network appliance which offers an API that ACP does not natively support. In this case the user can employ a Generic Connector to manually define the API endpoints offered by this appliance and then integrate its functions with an ACP workflow as normal.
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Once a Generic Connector has been defined it can be selected from the Connectors section of any Workflow.
Workflows Executing Workflows
ACP ships with a self-referential “acp” connector type which is designed to include API calls generated by the ACP system itself. This connector type can be found from the general list of connector types on the Connectors modal.
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