Connecting CCP with CPO how-to

[MatBecker]

Is there a document available describing how to combine Cisco Cloud Portal (newScale) and Cisco Process Orchestrator (Tidal Enterprise Orchestrator)?

The documentation describes newScale and TEO, but not how you combine them to create the CIAC Solution.

I am looking for an how-to document describing in an example how to define a service plan delivery task that uses a ServiceLink workflow to initiate activities in TEO.

[carofern]

Hi Matthias,

Thanks for your question.  The attached document should help answer your question.  Please send an e-mail to ciscoiaprivatecloud@cisco.com if you have additional questions.

Carolina

[meisenst]

There are also some VoDs on this

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-19046

https://supportforums.cisco.com/videos/3012

[MatBecker]

Sorry, first link I get an authorization error.

Second link I get a “Not found” message.

[Fabio Gutierrez]

Matthias, there's no document that I've seen that outlines this in a general sense. The Cloud Automation processes are a good reference so you might want to copy one of those agents for your new agent, and then modify that.

When you create a new process in TEO (2.2) it is added as a new method in the WSDL (with no spaces), however you may need to refresh web services on the TEO server. So if you create a new process called "My TEO Process" you can set your outbound Service Link agent WSDL operation to "binding1_IProcessService.StartMyTEOProcess. You'll also need to modify the RequestHeaders properties for the "SOAPAction=" with the new process name. Your new TEO process should have functionality to parse the XML and pull whatever information you need from it and then do its work, call another process, etc. If you want to send information back to Request Center you'll need to capture the channel-id from the initial request so that Request Center can update the right service request.

I would say start with the Cloud Automation pack and see what's going on there and then copy and modify so you always have a working reference.

Hopefully some TEO experts can chime in and clarify/correct/elaborate as appropriate. Hope this helps.

[david.hout]

This is exactly what I've been trying to do but I haven't figured out how to parse the XML on the TEO side. 

I see there is an XPath Query activity but what do you specify for the "Source XML to query" when you configure that part of your process?

If somebody could provide an example I would be eternally grateful.

[Fabio Gutierrez]

You would enter a process variable for the Source XML to query, something like 'Process.Variables.Input.Service Request XML'. Of course you have to define this variable in your main process, and then you can drill down to it by clicking on the little box to the right of the "Source XML to Query" edit box.

In your request from the portal you'll need to send the data within tags that match this name, for instance something like:

Then you can pull each field out of the XML that's received, via the XPath Query Activity. Check out some of the existing transformations and workflows in your environment.

Hope this helps.

[david.hout]

Thanks Fabio - very helpful information

At this point I am parsing the xml with xpath successfully.  The next thing I need to do is send status updates and then mark the task as complete.  For this it looks like I could create a web services request in TEO that points back to

http://:8089/IntegrationServer/webservices/wsdl/TaskService.wsdl

I've tried this a couple of different ways, most recently using the "Specify class using an XML String" where I create the message manually and insert my variable containing the channelId as follows:

Now it seems that no matter what I do I get the following error back from my web service call on TEO:

Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

Client found response content type of '', but expected 'text/xml'.

Followed by a long xml error (see attached)

I'm wondering if I need a special input transformation on the cloud portal side?  Right now it's configured as "No transformation (uses nsXML)".

[Shaun Roberts]

Firstly, you need to do a web http request back to that URL you have listed with an XML message like this:

http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"

xmlns:ext="http://externaltask.api.newscale.com">

On the portal side you’ll need to have the web services adapter listening and you’ll want to remove the namespaces, so I use this as an inbound transformation (same as the OOTB for CIAC):

http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

[david.hout]

Thanks!  Got it to work.  I thought it may be useful to package my sample into an automation pack.  See attached.

Is there anything analogous to automation packs on the portal side of things?

[mikesmi3]

The Portal side has Catalog Deployer and deployment packages.

[david.hout]

Thanks for that

The next question is what if I want to get some arbitrary data back into the portal from my TEO process?  If I specify output parameters for my TEO process how do I access those from the portal?  Does that require a different type of transformation?

[support aciernet]

Hi,

I've been working on a project with CIAC in the past 2 months with Cisco's partner Aciernet, and I recently started to try to make new processes in the orchestrator and call them via the portal, I am trying that two ways, by copying an existing process, and by creating a simple process. I've not gotten them to do what I want but I am slowly learning, I don't forget to restart jboss (just refreshing the web service doesn't seem to work) before copying/creating an agent "linked" to my new process, etc;

To go faster in my learning phase, I would like to watch all available videos/documents, the 2 files listed here seem interesting, but the first link brings me to a page that says I don't have the right authorization to access the file, and the second link doesn't exist anymore. I would like to get access to those documents and/or other ones if such files exist (I already have read Cloud_ProcessAutomation.pdf), if possible?

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-19046

https://supportforums.cisco.com/videos/3012

Ashley Gasmi, Aciernet

Thank you.

[Shaun Roberts]

Those videos date back to 2.1 dates and are probably very outdated and not too valid. Plus they are apart of the Design Center which is for internal Cisco only.

If you are just looking to learn, have you read all my blog entries?

https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/data-center/intelligent_automation?view=blog

In the "Pondering Automation" blogs I do lots of VODs and talk in depth about advanced content authoring and do cover lots of web services. A couple of mine do cover the connection between CCP and CPO.

I have written numerous custom automations between the two apps as well so if you have some specific question I'm happy to attempt to answer here or you can email me.

-Shaun Roberts

shaurobe@cisco.com

[support aciernet]

Thank you very much!

I hadn't spent alot of time on the support forum yet, I didn't know such blogs existed.

Your blogs are full of interesting information, and I'm starting to read them.

Ashley Gasmi, Aciernet.