API Calls from within Hornbill

[Jim]

Is it possible at all to make an api call to Hornbill within our workflows? some things don't exist ..yet? within the autotasks especially but if I can make an api call from within an asset I can do some status changes or anything else that is not yet developed. I had a ganders at the cloud HTTP basic auth request but I'm not sure what I would be passing over to authorize said api call from within a workflow, I would ideally rather that this behaved as each user opposed to a generic api key

[Steve Giller]

The BPM Workflows are intended to be codeless.

Making API calls within them is about as far from that as you can get.

I will defer to any Developer that joins this discussion and contradicts me, but I would imagine this isn't on anybody's list.

[Jim]

Hi @Steve Giller I appreciate that but certain things such as changing asset status' when we move assets in bulk more often than not is quite tedious with what is currently provided and being able to make an auto task that could do this until something is developed within the workflows would make this task easier, The scripts aren't an option we would consider providing to every user that has to move assets around the organisation 

[Gerry]

@Jim

A large number of our customers use the BPM in a non-technical way. We have avoided adding any developer-type coding capabilities within the BPM because that will lead it in the wrong direction, we already have quite a lot of trouble where people tend to treat the BPM a bit like a graphical programming environment.   We have two types of automations conceptually, we have Hornbill automations which as the name suggests relates to automating things directly within your (or another) Hornbill instance, for this there is a whole slew of ready-made automations for you to use.  The second type of automation is via integrations, for these we also have many pre-built integrations that you can just use without having to writ code either. 

I think what you are describing is there are things you want to do from within your workflows that are not currently supported in the Hornbill Automations available?  If i have that right, for both Hornbill Automations and 2rd Party Integration Automations we have a policy of adding anything that we think makes sense, and would be valuable for other customers.  So if there are specific things you need that we do not currently cover, your first port of call should be to post the specifics of your requirements on these forums with a view to getting those reviewed and added to our roadmap for inclusion. 

As far as being able to call an API from the BPM, in order to do this developer features are required. We are thinking about how we might make more features available for developers, that almost certainly won't be by making the Workflow system have more coing type capabilities, but will probably include a system to allow you to develop functions, integrations using code that can be presented inside the Wrokflow like we do for Hornbill Automations and iBridge integrations.  Thats some way off, but it is in our thinking for sure. 

Hope that helps,

Gerry 

[Jim]

Hi @Gerry Thank you for that, 

 

I do think an environment where we could almost build our own automations and maybe share them with the community would be awesome.

[Gerry]

@Jim

For sure, to be honest, as we have seen greater adoption of Hornbill in the enterprise end of the spectrum, the demand for capabilities to allow customers to develop their own functionality on our platform has been rising sharply, and its something we are planning to address in coming releases, I will be talking about this a lot at Insights this year.   We are looking at Enterprise and ESM as a new market really, its quite a different set of needs that ITSM, or IT Service Management used in other parts of the business.  Don't get me wrong, hornbill Service Manager and the Hornbill Platform are very capable in this regard, but even with the power of the workflow and automation capabilities, there is a limit to how far that can be pushed.  The Hornbill Platform and Service Manager product-market fit today is not where it needs to be in terms of that ESM market need, and does need new product capabilities, much of which is centred around that need for the ability to extend the solutions functionality far more deeply via development type capabilities, so we do have plans in the works.  

In the mean time though, if there are useful Hornbill automations, or iBridge integrations that we have not yet implemented, please do ask, we can generally add these things quite easily. 

Gerry