Integrating applications

An application connector is used to integrate an application such as Microsoft Exchange into your workflow automations. The designer provides a discovery mechanism to find the application actions that you want to use, and as a result generates an application connector artifact and business objects in the designer.

The application connector editor shows you relevant information about the application.

To call an action of an application, you use an application connector activity in a service flow.

To discover an application and generate an application connector artifact and related business objects in the designer that you can use in a service flow, complete the following steps.

Before you begin

Before you can use applications in your workflow automations, you must enable the applications capability in your environment, by adding the following to the ICP4ACluster custom resource:

spec:
  connectivity_pack_configuration:
    enable: true

Procedure

Discovering an application

From the library navigation, click Services > (+) > Application connector.
Select an existing account from the account list or create a new account by clicking the account list and then Add a new account...

To obtain the required credential information for the account creation, read the documentation of the application used.

Accounts are not part of the automation and must be created with the same name in the environments where the automation is installed.

Accounts can be created, updated, and deleted using the Applications Operations REST APIs. For more information, see Operations REST APIs.

Accounts are globally configured and can be used across all workflow automations. The account life cycle is independent from the life cycle of the automation that uses the accounts.

When updating an existing account, ensure that the new credentials provide at least the level of access required by the application connectors using that account.
Select the actions you want to use in your workflow automation.
Click Add to create an application connector artifact in the designer. The created application connector is automatically opened in the designer.

In the Data library section, you might see business objects as a result of generating the application connector. These business objects are only for the application connector and are read-only. Deleting the application connector also deletes these business objects. The life cycle of business objects is tied to the life cycle of the application connector.

Discovering the same application again results in new application connectors. This allows you to use the same application with different accounts or different actions.

Viewing an application connector

If not opened already, open an application connector by selecting the application connector from the library under Services.

Using the application connector in a service flow

Create or open a service flow where you want to use the application connector. For more information, see Creating a service flow.
Drag an application connector task from the palette to your service flow.
Select the application connector as an implementation of the application connector task.
1. Select the action that you want to use from the action list.
2. Map the inputs and outputs in the Data Mapping tab.
  For a filter parameter, consult the documentation of the application provider to determine what fields can be used as part of the filter. An example of a filter for the Microsoft Exchange Retrieve Emails action is
```
{"where": {"and": [{"importance": "high"}, 
{"createdDateTime":{"gte": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"}}]}}
```
To catch errors raised during application invocations, attach a catch all boundary error event to the application connector task.
For more information, see Catching errors by using error boundary events.

What to do next

Install your workflow automation to a workflow server for production use. For more information, see Installing workflow automations and automation services. Make sure to create the accounts required by the installed workflow automations.
Administrators can manage accounts by using the Operations REST API. For more information, see Operations REST APIs. Use these APIs to create required accounts, to update accounts when the credentials need to be refreshed, or to delete accounts that are no longer needed.