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Manual and Automated Workflows

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In this section, the term operator  denotes an evalink talos user with any user role (Operator, Operator Minimal, Administrator, or Manager) who processes an alarm.

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There are no limitations for creating Automated or Manual workflows:

Both Manual and Automated Workflows can also be created with the help of Workflow Templates (see section Standard, Managed Workflows, and Workflow Templates > Workflow Templates).

coming soon

Alarm Dispatcher (mentioned in this section) will be described in further documentation releases.

Manual Workflows​

A Manual Workflow is a workflow that needs to be processed with the help of an operator. A Manual Workflow needs to be created if a workflow must contain at least one manual step (see section Workflows Overview > Manual and Automated Steps). Manual Workflows can contain both manual and automated steps.

In the list of workflows, a Manual Workflow is identified by a person icon.

When a Manual Workflow is executed, evalink talos guides the operator through manual steps, prompting them to perform each step and displaying the relevant information.

Alarms Handling​

An alarm can be automatically assigned to a Manual Workflow by evalink talos if it:

After an alarm is automatically assigned to a Manual Workflow (or if it is not assigned to any workflow), it is queued on the Alarms page. While the alarm is queued, it can be manually assigned to any applicable workflow or can be assigned to an operator for processing.

Execution of Automated Steps in a Manual Workflow​

If a Manual Workflow contains automated steps, these steps can be executed by evalink talos automatically.

Automated execution is applied if the global Quick Execute Simple Automated Steps in Workflows setting is enabled (the default option).

If the option is disabled, the execution of automated steps must be triggered by the operator by clicking on the corresponding action buttons.

For details on the Quick Execute Simple Automated Steps in Workflows option and other global workflow settings, see section Global Settings for Workflows.

Automated Workflows​

An Automated Workflow is a workflow that can be executed without any human interaction.

An Automated Workflow should be created if the procedure can be fully comprised of automated steps. An Automated Workflow cannot contain manual steps.

In the list of workflows, an Automated Workflow is identified by a cloud_queue icon.

Alarms Handling​

If an alarm matches the conditions of an Automated Workflow, it gets processed immediately and never shows up on the Alarms page. The event log of the workflow can be viewed on the Event Logs page.

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If event logging was restricted for the workflow (see section Event Logging for Workflows > Event Logging Settings on the Workflow Level), after the workflow completion the workflow event log is erased from the Event Logs page. Only the event log of the processed alarm remains in the list.

Automated Workflows Executed in Foreground and in Background​

A Foreground Automated Workflow is used to actually process an alarm.

A Background Automated Workflow is used to execute an internal task in evalink talos that doesn't handle the alarm by itself, but performs some action that must be triggered when the alarm arrives.

For example, the same alarm may trigger:

  • a Foreground Automated Workflow that checks a parameter (for example, a status) and performs an action

    AND

  • a Background Automated Workflow that calls an external application API and files the alarm details for statistics gathering purposes

Concurrent Execution with Other Workflows and Alarm Consuming​

Concurrent workflows execution can take place if the alarm matches the incoming conditions of several Automated Workflows.

Among Foreground Automated Workflows, by default, only one workflow is selected to process an alarm. The selection is performed according to the priorities described in section Alarm Consuming Priority. Administrator can enable concurrent execution for Foreground Automated Workflows, see section Global Settings for Workflows > Support Multiple Automated Workflows. When the setting is enabled, the alarm is processed by all matching Automated Foreground Workflows in parallel. A Foreground Automated Workflows always consumes the alarm, which means that after processing the alarm is closed.

All Background Automated Workflows that are matched by an incoming alarm attempt to run when the alarm arrives. A Background Automated Workflow can be executed in parallel with other Background Automated Workflows, with Foreground Automated Workflows and with Manual Workflows, and are also executed for the alarms that are forwarded by Alarm Dispatcher.

No workflow prioritization rules apply to Background Automated Workflows, since:

  • they are executed in all cases

  • they don't consume alarms – an alarm that triggers a Background Workflow remains active after the workflow has finished execution

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evalink talos limits the number of Automated Workflows that can run concurrently on a site, see section Concurrent Execution of Automated Workflows.

Concurrent Execution of Automated Workflows​

evalink talos limits the number of concurrently executed Automated Workflows to a maximum of ten workflows per site.

The limit includes:

  • Foreground and Background Automated Workflows

  • Standard Workflows of all levels that run on the site and Managed Workflows that are linked to the site

If the limit is exceeded, execution errors occur in all Automated Workflows that attempted to execute.

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