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Set Activity (Orchestrator Runbook) to run on specific date, after approval

VikVik Member IT Monkey ✭
edited July 2022 in Service Manager

Hi guys,

We have a User Account Change service in the portal that HR can submit user changes. The Service is composed with 2 activities and works well when changes need to be actioned right away, after we approve it, but sometimes the changes will only need to be actioned on a specific day in the future:

  • 1 - Approve Activity
  • 2 - Trigger the changes: uses Orchestrator to run a PS script.

I noticed that all activities have a Scheduling tab with Start date. Is there where we can setup when an activity will actually run (trigger Orchestrator script)? If so, which one, Scheduling deployment or actual deployment? So we want the second activity to run on 01/08/2022, and needs to be automatically.



Many thanks

Answers

  • Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭

    Unfortunately, it's not how those fields work.

    However per our announcement at Innovate earlier this year, we will soon be launching Delay Activity which will allow you to in effect pause the SCSM workflow engine until a desired time.

  • Simon_ZeinhoferSimon_Zeinhofer Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    @Vik we implemented this by ourselves.

    1. You need to script the Schedule/reschedule via powershell. The most important part is to set the "Is Ready for Automation" to false and then set the Scheduled Start date.
    2. You have to build your own workflow in the authoring tool, which goes through all Runbook Automation Activities, which have "ready for automation" set to false and have their scheduled start date to "less or equal to now". Then you set "Is ready for automation" to true.

    The runbook will run shortly after. We use this a lot, also when we want to schedule a runbook to a time after e.g. the AD connector ran. With rescheduling it is very important to delete the SCOJobIdentifier, else the runbook activity will be set to completed after it has been set to rerun :D

    But I would just recommend you to wait for the Delay Activity, as you could harm your system by doing something wrong here.

  • Jeff_LangJeff_Lang Customer Ninja IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭

    We had a similar issue, but wanted differing delays on different requests, we ended up creating a manual activity that is assigned to no one, and the title containing "Time Delay Activity XXX YYYY" where XXX was a number, and YYYY a type, eg Minutes/Hours/Days.


    We then had a workflow that checked the actual start date of the activity, then checking if enough time had passed by looking at the period defined in the title and adding it to the actual start date. if enough time had passed the workflow completed the activity.


    I Assume the Delay Activity Cireson is planning will be similar in setting a delay somehow and not a specific time (Hoping to move over to it and remove out custom ones if possible once it's done)

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