“Everything ends; you just have to figure out a way to push to the finish line.” — Jesse Itzler
Last time, we wrapped up the work on the example Service Account dashboard, although we did leave off a few potential enhancements that could improve its value. There is always more that could be done, such as the addition of an Admin Perspective showing all of the accounts and requests or an Expiring State showing all of the accounts that are coming up for review. Since this is just an example, we don’t need to invest the time in building all of those ideas out; some things should be left as an exercise for those who would like to pull this down and play around with it.
What we should do now, though, is take a quick step back and see what we have so far and what might be left to do before we can call this good enough to push out. When we first set out to do this, we identified the following items that would need to be developed:
One or more Service Catalog items to create, alter, and terminate accounts
A generic workflow for the catalog item(s)
A type-specific workflow for each type of account in the type table
Some kind of periodic workflow to ensure that the account is still needed.
We have basically created everything on our list except for that last item, but we have also indicated that the process to check back every so often and see if the account was still needed is something that could be handled by a stand-alone generic product that could perform that function for all kinds of things that would benefit from a periodic review. If we assume that we will turn that process over to a third party, then we would seem to have just about everything that we need.
There is one other thing that would be helpful, though, and we neglected to included it on our original list. It would be nice to have some kind of menu item to launch all of these processes that we have built, so let’s put that together real quick and get that out of the way. I am thinking of something like this:
Service Accounts
New Service Account
My Service Accounts
Service Accounts
Service Account Types
The first item would initiate a request for the Service AccountCatalog Item, the second would bring up the dashboard, and the last two would just bring up the list view of our two tables. Those last two would also be limited to admins only and the rest would be open to everyone. Here is the high-level menu entry.
Service Account menu item
… and here are the four submenu options for this high-level menu item:
Service Account menu options
Which produces a menu that looks like this:
New Service Account menu section
So that’s about it for this little example project. Again, this is not intended to be a fully functional product that you would simply install and start using. This is just an example with enough working parts to get things started for anyone who might want to try to create something along these lines. Obviously, you would have your own list of types, your own implementation workflows for each type, your own approval structure for each type, and your own language in all of the notices, so it’s not as if someone could build all of that out in a way that would work for everyone. But for anyone would like a set of parts to play with to get things started, here is an Update Set that contains everything that we have put together during this exercise.
“It’s a bad plan that admits of no modification.” — Publilius Syrus
Last time, we wrapped up changes to our primary new Service Account request fulfillment Flow, and our second example Subflow for manually creating a new Active Directory account. Now we need to test everything all over again to make sure that we didn’t break anything, and to see if we finally have a working approach to the manual fulfillment process. Once again, let’s start with the automated example first, as that is the one that was working previous to all of these changes.
Testing the automated fulfillment process once again
… and it looks like that one still works, even with all of the alterations that we just did.
Successful account creation and task closure
Now let’s try the same thing with the manual fulfillment example.
Testing the manual fulfillment process
Under this scenario, the Requested Item will remain open until someone closes the task issued to the fulfillment group.
Requested Item waiting for manual fulfillment
So let’s hunt down the task, pretend that we created the account manually, and then close it and see what happens.
Closing the manual fulfillment task
Now the Requested Item shows completed, which also closes out the Request.
Completed manual fulfillment process
So now both the automated and manual example Subflows appear to do what they are supposed to do, which should complete the work on the Service Account creation process. Before we go, however, we should check the password emails sent out for both, just to make sure that those are working as they should as well. Here is the email sent out for the automated example.
Password email for the automated example test
And here is the email for the manual example.
Password email for the manual example test
Both look good, so it would appear that we have a successful strategy for fulfilling the requests for new Service Accounts of any type. To create a new type, you would just need to add the new record for the type to the table and then specify the appropriate Subflow on the new type record. This would make the new type appear on the catalog item drop-down list and the primary fulfillment Flow would then launch the Subflow specified in the type record during fulfillment.
As mentioned earlier, there is some work that we could do to streamline this process with a little bit of refactoring, but since it does work, we will leave that for another day at this point and move on to other things. In fact, those other things will be the subject of our next installment.
“Challenges are what makes life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” — Joshua J. Marine
Last time, we finished up with the modifications to our primary fulfillment Flow, so now we need to modify one of our example Subflows so that we can test out this new approach to the design. Since we already had the first example working under the old design, let’s start with that one, the one that builds ServiceNowService Accounts. Even though we did not build the Subflows in the App Engine Studio, they do appear there once they are created, so we can edit them while in the studio without having to resort to the older Flow Designer.
Next, we will need to alter the source of the Requested Item record in the first step. Now that we are using the Catalog Task as input, we will have to pull the Requested Item record from the appropriate Catalog Task property.
Getting the Requested Item record from the Catalog Task
The remainder of the existing workflow should be OK as it is, but under our new approach, our automated Subflow has one additional responsibility: we need to close the Catalog Task, both for a successful completion and for any kind of failure. Let’s handle the success story first by inserting an Update Record action just before we assign the Subflow outputs.
Closing the task on a successful completion
On the failure branch, we need to do the same thing, with different values, right before we assign the Subflow outputs at the end of that process.
Closing the task on failure
At this point, all we need to do is to Save and Activate the Subflow and take it out for a spin. The easiest way to try it out would be to jump into the Service Catalog and place another order.
First test of the new approach
Looking at the resulting Requested Item reveals that the Flow and Subflow executed successfully and the account was created.
Resulting Requested Item in Closed Complete state
So the Subflow that was working before is now working again using our new approach. Now we have to modify the manual example that wasn’t working before and see if that guy works under our new approach as well. Let’s jump into that next time out.
“The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.” — Charles Kettering
Last time, we started building out the second of our example fulfillment Subflows when we determined that we needed to build a custom Action to clear out the password value from the new Catalog Item Variable that we created so that the fulfilling technician could provide the new account’s password to the Flow. This is a relatively simple Action, so let’s jump right into the Flow Designer and get to it.
To begin, let’s click on the New button and select Action from the drop-down list.
Creating a new custom Action
We will give our new Action the name Clear Password From Task, and give it a single input, the task record that contains the password variable.
Action input definition
Since all we want to do here is to clear the value from the password variable, there is no need for any outputs, so we will just add a single Script step and insert the following code:
For that to work, we need to map the task record from the Action inputs to the script step’s inputs.
Script step
And that is all that there is to that. At this point, all we need to do is to Save and Publish our new Action and then we can jump back into our Subflow and use it in our next step.
Using our new custom Action to clear the password variable
Now all we have to do is to assign values to the Subflow outputs and that should complete the successful branch of our Subflow. Then we will need an Else condition to handle the possibility that the task was not completed successfully. But first, let’s wrap up the successful branch by assigning values to the Subflow outputs.
Setting the Subflow outputs
Here we run into a bit of a snag, as you cannot use the password value pill to populate the password output because the password output variable is a 2-way encrypted value and the password value pill is a simple string. To solve that problem, we resort to scripting, with the following code:
This may or may not work — we will have to try it. If it doesn’t properly convert, then we will have to come up with something else. But let’s give this a shot and see what happens.
So now all that is left is to assign the Subflow outputs in the event of a failure. We do that under an Else condition, and grab the reason from the task’s closure notes.
Setting the Subflow outputs for failure condition
Once we Save and Publish our new Subflow, we can jump back into the Service Catalog and place another order to try it out. This time, we will select Active Directory from the list of types so that we can drive the process through our new Subflow and see what happens.
Requesting a new AD Service Account
After clicking on the Request button, we are brought to our new Request record.
New AD Service Account request
Clicking on the item will bring us to the Requested Item record.
Requested Item record
At this point, we can see that something went terribly wrong somewhere along the line. The item is sitting at the Closed Incomplete state, and we never even got the chance to work the manual task that should have been created by our Subflow. That’s definitely not good. Well, that’s obviously not an optimal outcome for our test, but it should make for a fun debugging exercise for our next installment!
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
Last time, we wrapped up our Catalog Item by specifying the Flow that we created as the fulfillment method. Now we just need to test everything to make sure that it all works. The easiest way to do that is to jump into the Service Catalog and place an order. Let’s do that now.
Service Account Catalog Item in the Service Catalog
To request a new Service Account, we just need to complete all of the required fields that we created for this item.
Completing the request for a new Service Account
Since the only fulfillment Subflow that we have created so far is for a ServiceNowService Account, we will select that from the list and then complete the rest of the form. Clicking on the Request button creates the request and takes you to the summary page for the newly created request.
Newly created Service Request
Clicking on the name of the Requested Item brings you to the summary page for that item, that shows that it has, in fact, been fulfilled.
Fulfilled Requested Item
The status of the Requested Item is Closed Complete, and it includes the comment: Service Account testacct1 has been created and the requester has been notified. To verify the notification, we can jump over to the email logs and see if we can find an outgoing email for this request.
Outgoing notification email
One other thing that we will want to check is whether or not the account was actually created, so let’s pop over to the user list and see if we can find the user record.
Requested ServiceNow Service Account
So far, so good. Now let’s see if we can use the account. You shouldn’t be able to log on to ServiceNow with this account, but let’s try that anyway and see what happens.
Invalid log on attempt
Although the image above was what I was expecting to see, the only way I got that was to reset the password on the new Service Account. When I first attempted to log in directly, I got an invalid password message. What that tells us is that the method that I used to set the password when we first created the record did not work. Apparently, you cannot just set the password field to a specific value; there must be some other, more secure way to do that aside from just passing in the value. I’ll have to do a little research on the appropriate way to go about that, make a few changes, and then test again. It’s always something! Well, now we have the subject matter for our next installment.
“Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” — Plato
Last time, we built out a fulfillment Subflow for one of our two example Service Account types, so now we can build the primary Flow that will call that Subflow and do all of the other work required to fulfill the request. Although you can configure a Flow to call a Subflow using the Flow Designer, you have to specify the Subflow during the development process. In our case, the Subflow that we will want to use will be dependent on the type of Service Account requested, so we will not know which Subflow will need to be called until execution time. Ideally, we would want to look the type requested, read the record for that type to get the Subflow, and then execute the Subflow specified in the type record. Since there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that out of the box, we will need to build out a custom Action to make the Subflow call via script. I created a simple Action called Create Service Account that takes the name of the Subflow and the Requested Item record as input and returns the same outputs as our fulfillment Subflows. The script for that Action looks like this:
(function execute(inputs, outputs) {
try {
        var result = sn_fd.FlowAPI.getRunner()
            .subflow(inputs.subflow)
            .inForeground()
            .withInputs({requested_item: inputs.requested_item})
            .run();
var returned = result.getOutputs();
for (var name in returned) {
outputs[name] = returned[name];
}
    } catch (e) {
        outputs.success = false;
outputs.failure_reason = 'Subflow execution failed with error: ' + e.getMessage();
    }
})(inputs, outputs);
All it does is launch the Subflow with the Requested Item record passed and returns whatever is returned by the called Subflow. This will essentially perform the same function as the Call Subflow action, but with the added benefit of allowing us to pass in the name of the Subflow to be called rather than have it hard-coded in the Flow.
Now that we have the ability to call a configured Subflow, we can jump back into the App Engine Studio and build out the primary Flow. On the dashboard for our application, we can scroll down to the Logic and automation section and then click on the Add button right after the section header.
To create a new Flow, click on the Add button near the Logic and automation section header
Once you click on the Add button, a selection list appears, with Flow being the first option.
Select Flow from the available options
On this screen, we simply select Flow from the available options, which takes us to the next screen.
Flow definition
On this screen we enter Service Account Request Fulfillment in both the Name and the Description fields and then click on the Continue button.
Flow creation
The next screen just comes up long enough for the basic Flow to be created, after which we are brought to the successful completion screen.
Flow creation completion
At this point, the Flow now exists, but it has no steps, so we will want to click on that Edit this flow button to start building out the logic of the Flow. We will select Service Catalog as the trigger, and as we did with our sample Subflow, the first thing that we will want to do is to gather up the variable values from the Requested Item.
Grabbing the variable values from the Requested Item
This time, we will need the type, the responsible_group, and the account_id from the request. The next thing that we will want to do is to read the Service Account Type record for the requested type, so we will select Look Up Record for our action.
Fetching the Service Account Type record
We are looking for the record where the Name field matches the type selected on the Catalog Request. Once we have the variable values from the request and the matching type record, we can call our type-specific Subflow using the Action that we created for that purpose.
Creating the Service Account using the type-specific Subflow
Now we need to check to make sure that the account was created, so we add an If condition based on the success flag returned by the Subflow.
Checking the Subflow success
If the account was created successfully, we will want to create a record for the account in our Service Account table, but before we can do that we need to fetch the record for the responsible group from the sys_user_group table. We have the name of the group from the catalog item variables, but we need the sys_id of the record to populate the Service Account record. We can do this with another Look Up Record action, searching the table for a record with the same name.
Fetching the user group record
With the user group record now in hand, we have enough information to create the new record in our Service Account table.
Creating the new Service Account table record
Once we have created a record for the new Service Account, we will want to inform the user that the account has been created and is available for use. I took a short-cut here and just stubbed out a simple email, but ideally you would want to use a mail template and include some boiler-plate verbiage about company policies on the use of Service Accounts, security concerns, and related information on the owner’s responsibilities. All of that would ultimately be up to anyone attempting to implement such as system, and has little relevance to the workings of the process, so I will leave that to others and just include something simple as an example.
Informing the user of the account’s availability
The password for the account should be sent out in a separate email, but before we do that, let’s go ahead and close the Requested Item now that the account has been created and the requested notified. To do that, we will select Update Record for our action and then drag in the pill for the Requested Item record, which will then populate the Table value.
Closing the Requested Item
Now all that is left to do is to send the password for the account to the requester. I took another short-cut here in that the only contents of the body of the email is the password itself with no other information, but again, this is only a sample. An encrypted email from a template would obviously be preferable here, but this at least provides a placeholder for performing this task in a much better way.
Sending the password to the requester
That completes the process for a successful account creation, but if the account could not be created for any reason, we still need to close out the Requested Item with that information. To do that, we will add an Else condition to our If and then insert one more step under the Else.
Closing the Requested Item on account creation failure
And that’s all there is to that. Now that we have our completed Flow, we can go back into our Catalog Item and specify this Flow for fulfillment. Once that has been done, we can finally request the item to generate a Requested Item record that we can use to test all of this out. That will probably be a little bit of an adventure, so let’s save all of that for our next time out.
“One step at a time is all it takes to get you there.” — Emily Dickinson
Last time, we built out the majority of the Catalog Item that we are creating for the purpose of requesting a new Service Account. All that is left for us to do now is to create the process that will fulfill the request once it has been made. Because our intent is to create a single Catalog Item for any type of account, and each type of account will have its own unique account creation process, we will want to build a generic workflow of some kind that will look at the type requested and then launch the appropriate fulfillment process based on that type. Before we jump in and start creating things, though, we will need to come up with a strategy that will facilitate combining a generic outer process with a type-specific inner process.
Assuming that each type will have its own Subflow unique to the type, we will want to store a link to that Subflow on the type record that we created earlier. This way, the generic process can look at the type requested, read the record for that type, and then grab the link to the Subflow so that it can be launched. To make that work, we will need to devise some kind of standard for the Subflow in terms of inputs and outputs so that the generic process can consistently communicate with any given fulfillment Subflow. For input, the Requested Item record should suffice, but the outputs will depend on how much work will be delegated to the Subflow and how much will be handled by the primary process.
In addition to the creation of the account, our process should also perform a number of other tasks such as notifying the user of the account’s creation, sending them the assigned password, creating the record in the accounts table, and closing the request. Since everything except the account creation is universal, our Subflow should be limited to just the steps necessary to create the account, and all other activities should be handled by the primary request. For that to work, the Subflow will need to return sufficient data to the primary process so that it can successfully complete all of the other work. We also have to allow for the possibility that the account could not be created for whatever reason, and that information will need to be communicated back as well. This may change over time as we get into the weeds, but for now, I think that the following should be able to handle everything needed.
Success flag
Failure Reason
Account ID
Account Password
Account Owner Instructions
Since we will need a working Subflow to test out the primary process, it might be wise to start with that first, and then circle back to the primary process once we have a working Subflow to call. Before we do that, though, we need to figure out a way to generate a password. If you search through all of the Script Includes bundled with the product for anything that has the word password in the name, you can find a lot of password generation scripts already out there. Unfortunately, these are all in the global scope, and their access is limited to the global scope, so we can’t call any of these from our Scoped Application. If you search the Internet for password generation scripts, you can find even more, but most of these are much more sophisticated that I was looking for. Ultimately, I borrowed a few things from here and there and came up with a simple Action that had no inputs, one output, and a single script execution step with the following logic.
(function execute(inputs, outputs) {
var upper = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
var lower = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
var number = '0123456789';
var special = '!@#$%&*()_+<>[].~';
var source = upper + lower + number + special;
outputs.password = '';
while (outputs.password.length < 32) {
outputs.password += source.charAt(Math.floor(Math.random() * (source.length + 1)));
}
})(inputs, outputs);
This does not guarantee that you will have at least one of each category of character, but with 32 positions, the chances are still pretty good that you will. I ran it a few times to see, and I didn’t think that the results looked all that bad.
dPoxtBDUqaCtFaH2knI]XI0Ts*#1rKyT
xnDRzngKOMy~py8xK[xV]2S2CTkh]RWv
knUHn*0WJ4H_Ww90gq[2TqJmKKb0Xu9v
OcWe4TKQN#0[RM1wj$p$(#_Sp.~CVTiM
>wEE!CbrFGwYccWb#H>+6pyEpZwjcJ%A
Each one seems to have a little bit of everything, so I think it is good enough for what we are trying to do here. So now that we have that in place, we can start working on our Subflow. Unfortunately, you can build a Flow in the App Engine Studio, but not a Subflow (or at least if you can, I cannot figure out how to do that). So, to build out our Subflow, we will have to jump into the old Flow Designer. To create a new Subflow, we select New -> Subflow up in the upper right-hand corner and give it a name of ServiceNow Service Account Creation. The first thing that we will do is create all of the inputs and outputs listed above.
Inputs and Outputs of our new Subflow
Once we have our inputs and outputs defined, we can jump down in the Actions section and start adding steps to the flow. The first thing that we will want to do is to grab the requested account ID from the Requested Item, so we will select Get Catalog Variables from the list of available actions and drag in the Requested Item pill from the inputs.
Fetching the account ID from the Requested Item
For the template, we select our new Service AccountCatalog Item, and once we do that, all of the variables defined for that item appear in the Available list, from which we can select account_id. This will give us an account_id pill which we can use in future steps.
The next thing that we will want to do is to find out if the requested account ID is already in use. We can do that by reading the sys_user table, so for our next step we select Look Up Record from the list of actions and select the User table from the list of tables.
Checking the sys_user table for an existing account
Our only condition for this is that the User ID is the requested account ID, which we again drag over from the inputs. Once we attempt to fetch the record, the next thing that we will want to do is to check and see if a record was returned, so for our next step we will select If from the Flow Logic options.
Checking to see if a record was found on the sys_user table
If a record was returned with the requested account ID, then we want to stop the process and return a failure message back to the calling Flow. To do that, we select Assign Subflow Outputs for our next step and fill in the values for the output fields.
Setting the Subflow outputs for existing User ID failure
Hopefully, the account will not already exist, so we will want to put all of our other steps under an Else condition. The first step under our Else condition will be to generate the password using the Action that we created earlier.
Generating a new password
Once we generate the password we have enough data to create the user record, so for our next step we will select Create Record from the list of actions and populate the record with data pills from the input and preceding processes.
Creating the new Service Account record
Once the record has been created, we need to report back to the calling Flow, so once again we will select Assign Subflow Outputs and populate the appropriate fields.
Setting the Subflow outputs for successful completion
Now all we need to do is to Save and Publish our Subflow and we will have one example to use for testing. We will still need to create one more for our other example use case, but we won’t need to do that just yet. Let’s see if we can make all of this work with our first example before we run off and build another.
At this point, it would be good to test this out to make sure that it all works, but to do that we will need a valid Requested Item record to send in as input, and since we have not completed our Catalog Item, we can’t really do that just yet. Let’s build our primary Flow first, and then update the Catalog Item to point to that Flow, and then we can publish the item and do some testing. To build the Flow, we can go back into the App Engine Studio, so let’s dive into that next time out.
“March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.” — Kahlil Gibran
Last time, we jumped into the App Engine Studio and began the process of creating our new Service Account Management app. We created the app and the two tables and now we need to edit the tables to add fields. We won’t necessarily add all of the fields that we need right now, as we don’t know exactly what we will be needing to support all of the processes just yet, but we will add enough to get things started. To begin, let’s jump back into the studio and pull up the dashboard for our new Scoped Application.
Service Account Management app dashboard
Let’s start with the Service Account table by clicking on the ellipses at the end of the row and select the Edit option. That brings up a series of modal help screens that we need to click through to get to where we can actually add a new field.
Table edit tab
The first field that we want to add is the reference to our type table, so we give it a label, which generates a name, and then we select Reference from the available field types.
Selecting the Reference field type
Selecting Reference from the drop-down opens up yet another pick list, which is a list of tables from which we will select our Service Account Type table.
Service Account Type field added to Service Account table
Now that we have added the type field to our table, we can use the same procedure add additional fields. For now, we will just add the fields that we think that we will need to support our processes, and then add more later if we find that other data points are needed. At this point, we will just include the following:
Active Flag
Account User ID/Name
Owner
Owning Group
Provisioned Date
Retired Date
Last Attestation Date
Last Attested By
Other things that we might need could possibly include a link to the Requested Item that created the account or the workflow that created the account, but let’s set those ideas aside for now and just focus on the basics. Here is the complete table definition after adding all of the fields.
Completed Service Account table
Now we need to do the same thing for our technology type table, which will have even fewer fields.
Service Account Type table
That completes the work on the tables for now, but before we move on, let’s add a couple of rows to our type table for the two types of examples that we will use for testing, one that can be fulfilled through automation and another that we will fulfill manually. For the automated example, we can simply use ServiceNowService Accounts, and for the manual example, let’s do Active Directory. To begin entering data from the App Engine Studio, pull up the dashboard for the app and select the PREVIEW link for the desired table.
Adding data to a table
This will bring up an empty list of records for this new table where you can click on the New button to bring up the data entry form.
Service Account Type data entry form
Once we enter all of the data for our two example types, we are returned to the list view where we can see our two new records.
Example Service Account Types
Now that we have our tables and control data in place, we can turn our attention to the process of requesting a new service account and fulfilling that request. Requests for new Service Accounts will be made through the Service Catalog, so we will need to build a new Catalog Item for these requests. In the App Engine Studio, a Catalog Item is a type of Experience, so to create a new Catalog Item, we will click on the Add button in the Experience section header.
Adding a new Experience from the dashboard
This brings up the Experience type selection screen where we will select Catalog Item from the available options.
Selecting Standard catalog item from the choices presented
This brings up a splash screen where we have to scroll down and click on the Begin button.
Initial splash screen for building a new Catalog Item
After clicking on Begin, we can enter the details for our new Catalog Item.
New Catalog Item data entry form
Once you enter all of the requested data and click on the Continue button, the new Catalog Item is created.
Catalog Item creation
After you sit and watch that screen for a bit, you are eventually taken to the completion screen.
Catalog Item completion
Of course, that’s not all there is to a Catalog Item. We will need to collect some data from the requester, including things like the type of Service Account requested and the desired user ID. Also, we will need to build some kind of fulfillment workflow that will get the account created. Next time, we will hit that Edit catalog item button and see if we can take care of all of that.
As most of you are aware, a Service Account is a special kind of user account that does not actually represent a physical human being. Most user accounts are for real users, but for automated interfaces and other integrations, many times you need credentials on external systems for use in your automation, and these accounts are not tied to any specific user. They are what is commonly referred to as a Service Account. In any give IT organization, there can be any number of Service Accounts for quite a wide range of services and technologies. Managing all of those accounts can become quite a burdensome task. There are a number of third party apps that provide tools for managing Service Accounts, but it occurred to me that the concepts are not all that sophisticated and it might be relatively simple to build a Scoped Application to handle the basic management of such accounts.
Here is what I am thinking: A single custom table could be built to store the account details. A second table could be used to store the various types of Service Accounts that could be stored in the main table, and one or more Service Catalog items could be used to manage the accounts. That’s not a huge number of artifacts, so it would appear that you could throw something together rather quickly. You know what I always ask myself: How hard could it be?
So let’s take a look at the lifecycle of an account. To create an account, you would request the account through the Service Catalog, providing all of the necessary information needed to set up the account on the appropriate technology. Let’s assume that the request has to be approved through the normal Service Request approval process, and that the requested item also has to be approved by the technology owner based on the type of account requested. Information on that second level of approval would be stored in the technology type table. Once approved, a fulfillment work flow would initiate, and once again we would turn to the technology type table to determine what specific fulfillment workflow should be executed to fulfill the request. Generally speaking, there would be two types of fulfillment, automated and manual. If the account creating and notification can be handled through automation or integration, then the entire process would be handled without human intervention. If not, one or more tasks would be generated and routed to the appropriate technical support resources. Either way, once the account was created and the requester notified, the requested item would be closed.
Creating the account is only half of account management process. It is never a good idea to just allow these things to live forever once they are created. There needs to be another catalog request process to manually terminate the account, and there should also be some process by which the requester reaffirms the need for the account on some predetermined interval. This Periodic Attestation process could, in fact, be another entirely different stand-alone app that could be used not only for this use case, but quite a number of others. That, however, would be an entirely different collection of blog entries, so we will leave that for another time. Still, we need a way to create an account, alter an account, get rid of account, and every so often, revisit the need for the account to continue to exist.
For our purpose, which is just to demonstrate the concept, we can just have two example technologies, one that we can automate, and one that we cannot (or more accurately, one that we choose to handle with a manual process). That will at least give us a demonstration of how things would work in either use case. Putting this all together, we will need to create the following:
A Scoped Application
A Master account table
A technology type control table
One or more Service Catalog items to create, alter, and terminate accounts
A generic workflow for the catalog item(s)
A type-specific workflow for each type of account in the type table
Some kind of periodic workflow to ensure that the account is still needed.
It’s not a huge list of parts, but there is still a little bit there, so we will just point ourselves in that general direction, start pushing ahead, and see what we run into along the way. Maybe we will use the App Engine Studio for this one and see how far we can get with that. Regardless, it should be a fun little project, so we will jump right into it next time out.
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.” — Bo Jackson
Last time, we started hacking up a copy of the Service Portalpagesc_category, beginning with the HTML. Now we need to update the Server script to pull in our data so that we can bring up the widget and see how it looks. For the header portion, we need to pull in data about the store, which we can get from the instance record for the Host instance.
function fetchStoreDetails() {
var instanceGR = new GlideRecord('x_11556_col_store_member_organization');
if (instanceGR.get('instance', gs.getProperty('x_11556_col_store.host_instance'))) {
data.store = {};
data.store.name = instanceGR.getDisplayValue('name');
data.store.description = instanceGR.getDisplayValue('description');
data.store.logo = instanceGR.getValue('logo');
data.store.sys_id = instanceGR.getUniqueValue();
}
}
For the apps, we look to the application table. At this point, we just want to pull in all of the data, so we will save any filtering for later in the development process. Right now, we just want to see how our presentation is coming out.
Some of that is still left over from the original widget, but we’ll clean that up later. For now, we just want to get to the point where we can throw this widget on a page and bring it up and see what we have. A lot of the other code from the original can be tossed, but we will need to retain a few things related to the paging, which leaves us with this.
That should be enough to make it work. Now let’s create a page for our widget, call it collaboration_store, and bring it up in the Service Portal Designer. To begin, let’s drag a 3/9 container onto the page.
Dragging a 3/9 container onto the new portal page
Once we have our container in place, let’s find our new widget and drag it into the 9 portion of the 3/9 container.
Dragging our new widget onto the page
Eventually, we will want to come up some kind of search/filter widget for the 3 section of the 3/9 container, but for now we will just leave that empty, save what we have, and pull up the page in the Service Portal to see how things are looking.
First look at our new store layout
Not bad! Of course, we still have a lot of work to do on the Client script to handle things like switching to the alternate view, clicking on a tile, or paging through lengthy results, but the look and feel seems to work so far. I think it might be good to put the logo of the store in the header, but other than that, I do not see any significant changes that I would like to make at this point. I think it actually looks pretty good.
We’ll need to start working on the Client script now, once again stripping out those things related to catalogs and categories, and making sure that the toggle functions still work for switching back and forth between the tiles layout and the table layout. Also, we will need to figure out what we want to do when the operator clicks on an app. We could bring up the details of the application in a modal pop-up, navigate to a detail page, or even go straight into launching an install. That will all end up in the Client script as well.
One thing that we will need to add to the view is the state of the app on the instance, whether it is up to date, needs to be upgraded to the latest version, or has never been installed. The state of the app may determine what happens when you click on the app, so we will need to figure all that out as well. So much to figure out, but still it is a pretty good start. Next time, we will just keep forging ahead unless we have some test results to address.
