Creating a playbook that is activated manually

A user activates a manually activated playbook by selecting it from an object's Action menu, as opposed to an automatic playbook that activates without user intervention when one or more pre-defined conditions occur.

About this task

Before you create the playbook, decide how the playbook activates. You have the following options. You can choose one, both, or none of the options.
  • Activation form. Create a form when you choose to have the user who selects the playbook to enter data before the playbook is activated. You define one or more fields and their values.
  • Conditions. Create those conditions that when met display the playbook in an incident's Action menu. To have the playbook appear in the Action menu of every incident with a compatible object type, do not enter any condition.

To access the Playbook designer, click Playbooks in the menu bar. The initial page provides a list of all the playbooks and their status.

Procedure

  1. From the Playbooks main page, click Create playbook.
  2. Provide a name and description of the playbook.
    The name must be unique.
    The name of the playbook displays in the incident's Action menu. Consider making the name succinct to keep it readable.
    The API name field is used for programmatic access and is automatically populated with the same name as the Name field but with underscores for spaces. You can change the API name to meet the need of your app developers, although it is not usually done.
  3. Click Create.
    An activation node is added to the canvas automatically along with an Activation details panel.
  4. In the Activation details panel, set Activation Type to Manual.
  5. Select an object type.
    The object type defines which type of data activates the playbook. The menu lists all object types except email message.
    If you select Data Table as the object type, you must also select a specific data table.
    For a description of each object type, see Incidents and objects in playbooks.
  6. To have a user enter data when activating the playbook, click Create form under Activation form (optional). You can define one or more fields, as described in Playbook activation form.
  7. To define conditions that must be met before a playbook is available in an incident's Action menu, click Create condition under Manual activation.
    The Create condition page opens.
    1. Under Condition builder, enter one or more conditions, where the condition statement must be true to activate the playbook. For more information about conditions, see Setting conditions that activate a playbook.
    2. When finished, click Done.
  8. You can configure the playbook to automatically cancel a running instance upon specific conditions, as described in Canceling a playbook automatically. If you choose to not cancel a running instance automatically, do not select any cancellation options.

Results

Go to Building the playbook to add the customizations and decision points to the canvas.