Operations Orchestration (OO) is speeding forward with a new release. We spoke with Daniel Crisan, OO product manager, to learn about the latest release and get answers to frequently asked questions about OO.

What’s the focus for this release?

First, our goal was to make sure that all OO users can benefit from new OO capabilities. This release lays the groundwork to transition customers using OO Desktop Studio and AFL (Advanced Flow Language) flows to OO Workflow Designer and CloudSlang content.

As most customers know, Workflow Designer is OO’s go-forward, web-based, low-code/no-code graphical interface for designing workflows. CloudSlang is the standard language used in OO. It’s a YAML-based open source language that can be edited textually and graphically in Workflow Designer.

Second, we released new capabilities to improve OO runtime performance and provide greater control for managing parallel steps in workflows. 

Is OO Workflow Designer compatible with AFL flows created in OO Studio?

With this release, AFL flows are now viewable in Workflow Designer. A graphical representation of AFL flows is updated with new icons and colors to match Workflow Designer’s modern UI. Flow details such as flow logic, transitions, scriptlets, and inputs/outputs are also viewable. In future releases, AFL flows will be editable.

AFL flows (left) are now viewable in Workflow Designer (right).

Is OO available on SaaS?

OO is available on SaaS as an add-on for SMAX (ITSM) and HCMX (hybrid cloud management) SaaS users. That means SaaS users can tap into powerful orchestration capabilities without the hassle of installing or upgrading OO.

SMAX SaaS users can use OO to design advanced orchestrated services across the IT ecosystem. For HCMX SaaS users, OO is already part of the solution for cloud orchestration. But if they want to use OO for non-cloud use cases—for example, deploying applications, managing users on Active Directory, or orchestrating network operations—they can add extra OO concurrent workflows.

Can you share some use case examples for service orchestration?

Customers usually ask about ESM and service fulfillment use cases, such as onboarding new employees, granting VPN access, and ordering new equipment. In each of these cases, OO interacts with involved applications and connects them to make sure all steps in a process are automated without any human involvement.

OO simplifies user-agent interactions too. For example, reusable orchestration flows can be easily triggered by agents or designed into services by ITSM admins. OO helps manage the complexity of integration and orchestration outside of the ITSM tool.  

Does OO have RPA capabilities?

Yes, OO can do robotic process automation (RPA)—as any advanced automation tool should. In Workflow Designer, you can do all your work in one place—including recording RPA (screen) actions and combining them with other automation steps. So if you have applications that can’t be automated with APIs or other automation protocols, just add an RPA step.

How does OO licensing work?

OO is one of the few automation tools that offers both unit and concurrent licensing. Most infrastructure automation tools offer only unit licensing, where a license is assigned to a node. In concurrent licensing, you pay for what you use—i.e., the number of workflows running concurrently. Concurrent licensing is perfect for orchestrating use cases where OO doesn’t touch a node (e.g., for integrations) or touches them infrequently. With concurrent licensing you have better control over your license usage, which you can track in real time.

What out-of-the-box content has been added recently?

Our content team releases content every three months. Some recent CloudSlang content additions include Red Hat OpenShift, Microsoft 365 SharePoint, and CyberArk. Of course, we regularly apply security updates to all our out-of-the-box content that includes basic operations, virtualization, and cloud. Check out our marketplace for all that’s available.

To read more about the latest release, be sure to visit the OO practitioner portal.

Related items 

• Product Expert Weighs In: “My Favorite Operations Orchestration Features.”
• Nine Reasons Why Your Automation Needs an Enterprise-Scale Orchestrator
• Automation Experts Choose OO—Here’s Why
• www.microfocus.com/oo

Have technical questions about Operations Orchestration? Visit the Operations Orchestration User Discussion Forum.  

Do you have an idea or product enhancement request? Submit it in the Operations Orchestration Idea Exchange.