Creating Client-side automations
Client-side automations provide a mechanism to launch out from the Netcool® Operations Insight® user interface in the user's browser to any third-party website.
The Client-side automation provider allows you to build a URL from a core URL string and some optional parameters. The URL must use the HTTPS protocol. To run a client-side automation (for example, as an automated step within a runbook) click the Launch button. When running a client-side automation, the parameters are replaced with the actual values, and the resulting URL is launched in a new browser tab. You can review the resulting URL in the automation output area and launch it again by clicking the displayed URL hyperlink.
Client-side automations are composed in the runbook back-end service but they are run in the browser context. Therefore, all runbooks that contain automated steps with client-side automations are considered as manual runbooks. Runbooks that are intended to be run fully automated must not contain client-side automations.
If the third-party website requires authentication then it will typically ask to provide login credentials before opening the requested page. It is not recommended to use parameters within the client-side automation to contain sensitive information (such as user passwords), as they can be seen in clear text in the resulting URL. Therefore password-style string parameters are not supported for client-side automations.
- To create a client-side automation, click
- Type
- Select
Client-side
. - Name
- Provide a name that describes what this automation does. For example,
IBM homepage search
. - Description
- Provide any helpful additional information so that the user can immediately understand which
problem this automation solves. For example,
Search the IBM home page for the given subject
. - Automation client URL
- Configure the URL for your automation. It is mandatory to use the HTTPS protocol, so the API
endpoint URL must start with "https://". You can use parameters. Parameter names need to be prefixed
with the
$
character. For example,https://www.ibm.com/search?q=$query
. Alternatively, specify a parameter that contains a full valid URL of the third-party website at the time when the client-side automation is started. For example:$openTicketWebPageURL
. - Automation parameters
- Add input parameters to run the automation. Those input parameters can be referred in the URL.
For example, a parameter
query
can be referred as$query
. The parameter query can be defined as follows:- Name:
query
- Description:
The subject to be searched on the IBM home page
- Type:
A single string value
- Minimum length:
1
- Maximum length:
not selected
- Password:
not selected
- Set a default value:
selected
- Default value:
runbook
- Name:
and complete the following fields:. - Add the automation to the runbook, see Adding automations.
- Run the runbook, see Run a runbook.