Home Certification 16. Lifecycle

16. Lifecycle

Let's turn our attention from building solutions to managing their lifecycle. Flowgear's lifecycle features help you manage change and apply appropriate governance principles. This is especially important for solutions that would cause business disruption if they were to fail.

  • Environments provide an easy way to target test endpoints (e.g. database or service instance) while building and testing.
  • Revision Management tracks changes to a Workflow so that you have a full history of changes.
  • Release Management controls when a revision of a Workflow ships to a specific Environment (for example, UAT or Production).

We'll discuss each of these in more detail here.

Environments

Environments provide a logical container that stores Workflow definitions along with Connection information.

By controlling when a Workflow is published to an Environment, you are able to build and test independent of the version of the Workflow that is already in Production.

By using different credentials under the Environments within a Connection, you can ensure that your testing doesn't interact with Production services or endpoints.

By default, each Site has two Environments, Test and Production. Open → Edit Site Settings to see the list of Environments.

Click ✎ next to an Environment to see its properties:

  • Name provides a descriptive Name
  • Version Control Branch Name provides the name of the version control branch that will be mapped to the Environment. This only applies when Flowgear is configured to store Workflows in a version control system like GitHub
  • Hostname is the endpoint that will be used to invoke Workflows in that Environment. Each Environment can have a unique hostname and you are able to customize the hostname of the Production Environment.
  • Allowed Origins controls CORS behavior. For more information see Site Detail Pane and http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/.
  • Key is a unique identifier for the Environment

On the Workflow Design pane, the run button defaults to Test (or the name of your first Environment). You can switch between different Environments using the v dropdown to the right of the Environment name shown on the run button.

Revision Management

Each time a Workflow is saved in the Design pane, a new revision of the Workflow is stored. You can review prior versions of a Workflow by clicking the Revision History button.

When clicked, a list of revisions will be displayed. Clicking one of these versions will open it in a new browser tab. You can copy sections of a Workflow if you wish to bring parts of an old design back in to a Workflow or you can click Save to save that version as the latest again. At this point it becomes the new latest revision of the Workflow.

Configuring Release Management & Version Control

Flowgear provides the option of storing Workflow designs within its internal storage or using a third party version control system like GitHub.

You can access Release Management & Version Control from → Edit Site Settings.

Under Version Control Mode, select either Basic or GitHub.

  • Under Basic, Flowgear will store your Workflow revisions in its internal storage.
  • Under GitHub, Flowgear will store Workflows in your GitHub account. Provide the URL to your repository in Repository URL and follow the steps at Setting up a Version Control Token to configure your user account to interact with your GitHub account. Other users who require Workflow access will need to follow the same steps.

Flowgear also allows you to control which Environments a Workflow is pushed to when it is saved. If you set Release Management Mode to Disabled, a Workflow will be saved to all Environments when you save it.

If you set Release Management Mode to Enabled, a Workflow will only be saved to the first Environment and you will need to promote it to other Environments explicitly. This allows you to work on a new design for a Workflow without disrupting the version of that Workflow that is already in Production.

Using Release Management

When you have Release Management enabled, saving a Workflow will only publish it to the first (i.e. Test) Environment.

When you are ready to publish the Workflow to other Environments, click Promote Workflow from the Workflow Design pane.

In the pane that opens, you'll see a list of Environments and a Promote button between each of them. Clicking Promote will publish the Workflow from the Environment on the left to the Environment on the right.

Exercise 23: Release Management

Set Release Management to Enabled under Release Management & Version Control (accessed from → Edit Site Settings).

  1. Add Formatter to a new Workflow and connect Start.RunNow → Formatter.

  2. Set Formatter.Expression to hello world.

  3. Add Variable Bar.

  4. Add Variable Bar.Greeting.

  5. Connect Formatter.Result → Variable Bar.Greeting.

  6. Open the Workflow Settings pane and turn on Allow Run On Demand.

  7. Save the Workflow.

    Run the Workflow and confirm you're seeing the result hello world.

  8. Click Promote Workflow then click Promote to promote the Workflow version from the Test Environment into the Production Environment.

  9. Change Formatter.Expression to hello universe.

  10. Save the Workflow.

  11. Click Promote Workflow again and confirm that you are seeing a different Workflow revision under the Test Environment to the one under the Production Environment.

  12. Go back to the Workflow Landing pane by clicking <, then click Run Workflow.

    Run the Workflow and confirm you're seeing the result hello world - this is the version of the Workflow that is currently in the Production Environment.

  13. Click ... next to where the Environment is shown and select Test.

    Run the Workflow again and this time you should see hello universe.

Return to the Workflow Design pane and click Submit Exercise to grade the Workflow.