Persistent Data Between Workflow Runs Using Global Variables

[brdly]

Hi, 

Sharing something I'm doing, and looking for other people's thoughts, opinions, comments, ideas. 

I have a workflow that runs every day at 7 AM and collects the WAN IPs from across my organisation using Meraki - Get Organisation Uplinks Statuses.

It then stores a copy of the results from this run in a global variable. 

When it runs the next day again, it retrieves yesterday's run from the global variable, fetches the current uplink statuses via the API, and compares them. It compares the organisation's uplink status with yesterday's. Then sends off an email to let us know a site's WAN IP has changed. 

So, I am using global variables to persistently store data between changes, a bit like a database. 

So I am wondering if there is a better way? What are other people doing? 

Suggestion - Could the workflow team add SQLite? lol

[Ed Novak - Cisco Workflows TME]

@brdly Global variables are indeed one way to maintain state within a Cisco Agentic Workflow, as you have been doing by storing daily WAN IP data for comparison. However, Workflows also supports integration with external systems to maintain state or store data more robustly.

Specifically, Cisco Workflows supports database operations using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), which is Java's standard API for connecting applications to relational databases like Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Server. This allows workflows to interact directly with databases to store, retrieve, and manipulate data.

The Workflows Database adapter supports the following JDBC activities:

• Call Procedure Via JDBC
• Delete from Table Via JDBC
• Insert Bulk into Table Via JDBC
• Insert into Table Via JDBC
• Select from Table Via JDBC
• Update Table Via JDBC

Using these activities, you can store your daily WAN IP data in a database table instead of relying solely on global variables. This approach can provide more scalability, persistence, and querying flexibility.

Would leveraging JDBC database operations meet your requirements for maintaining and comparing WAN IP data across workflow runs?