A collection of 10 custom flow steps for use with xMatters or Everbridge Flow Designer. Each step could be of use in a variety of custom flows; none are integration specific. The steps mostly involve string manipulation, e.g. splitting and truncating. There's also a Sleep step. See Handy Flow Steps Volume 2 for another set of ten steps, focussing on xMatters API and user/group admin.
The steps come packaged in a workflow with a tester form called Run Flow Step. You can try out each step via a UI messaging form and view the output in an alert notification.
- Access to Flow Designer, either via an xMatters instance or Everbridge Suite. These instructions assume you are installing on xMatters.
- xMatters account - If you don't have one, get one for free!
- HandyFlowSteps.zip - xMatters workflow containing 2 forms, 1 flow canvas and 10 custom flow steps.
The custom flow steps are...
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Match Substring (Contains)
Use this step to see if a short string (Needle) is contained in a longer string (Haystack). Case-sensitivity is controlled via the Case Sensitive input. The step returns either true or false.
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Sleep
Pause execution for a few seconds mid-flow. The step outputs the number of milliseconds slept. Sleeping for a second or two can be useful when trying to create a ticket in a third party system. Create the ticket, sleep, then retrieve id fields etc.
N.B. For all flows running in the xMatters Cloud, should any individual flow execution last longer than 60 seconds, xMatters will terminate the job with a status of Canceled. However, this maximum execution time does not apply if the step is running on an xMatters Agent.
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Reverse
This step reverses a string. Simple as that.
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Concat
This step joins up to five smaller strings together with an optional glue character (or characters) in-between. The output is a longer string.
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Banana Split
This step splits a string into two parts using a separator string. The output is two smaller strings.
N.B. No actual banana is harmed during the splitting process.
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Is Field Populated
The step takes the output of any field as an input and returns true if it has a value, false otherwise. A numeric 0 is considered true. This is useful because the output can be passed to a subsequent Switch flow step, switching on either true or false. Switches cannot test for blank input.
N.B. The Run Flow Step tester UI form runs 5 of these steps in sequence, testing different field types.
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Strip Prefix
This step removes a prefix from a string. The output is shorter string. An example of its use is extracting an Incident number from a Slack channel name.
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Truncate
This step chops a string down to size. Input options allow you to specify a clean-word break and whether to include an elipses (...) at the end to indicate the text was truncated. This stops the chopped string from appearing inelegant when passing to work notes etc. As well as the truncated string, the step outputs a true/false flag called isTruncted, and a count of the number of characters removed.
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Encrypt
This step lets you Encrypt a string using a Salt value.
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Decrypt
This step lets you restore a string from the Encrypt step, provided the same Salt is used.
N.B. Encrypt-decrypt is by no means strong encryption. It's use is more for obfuscation. You can encrypt a value, store it in a workflow constant, then decrypt before using it. This prevents sensitive information from being readily displayed in plain text.
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Log into xMatters as a user with either the Developer or Full Access User role. Navigate to Workflows, click the Import button on the top right and import the HandyFlowSteps.zip file. This is what you will see in the list of workflows.
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Navigate into the new workflow. You will see a list of two forms. Set Sender Permissions on the upper form, Run Flow Step. To do this, click the left most button. Ensure the form is accessible by selecting Web UI and then Sender Permissions. Add users or roles who can access the form. We recommend allowing all those with Full Access User and Developer roles to use the form.
The lower form, Results, is triggered by the upper form. To deploy it, choose Enable For Web Service.
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OPTIONAL. By default, only the user who imports the workflow has permission to use and modify the custom steps within the workflow. We recommend broadening permissions to allow all those with the Developer role to use and/or edit the flow steps. To do this, highlight the FLOW DESIGNER just to the right of FORMS. Open the Run Flow Step flow canvas.
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To the right of the screen on the Palette, highlight the CUSTOM tab. Navigate to each new flow step in turn. Click the gear icon then Usage Permissions. In the pop-up window, grant ACCESS to other users/roles as required, e.g. select the Developer role and grant permission to Edit Step.
You can try out each new custom step via the Run Flow Step messaging form. Navigate to Messaging > Handy Flow Steps > Run Flow Step. Choose which step to run in the first dropdown. Each step has it’s own corresponding form section with some demo values in it. You can use the demo values supplied or over-type with your own test values.
At the bottom of the form, you can set yourself as a Recipient. When you click Send Message, you will get an initial email notification confirming the flow has been launched. A short while later, a second email will arrive with the step’s output values clearly shown.
Navigate to Handy Flow Steps > Flow Designer tab > Run Flow Step canvas. You can see how the correct step is selected based on an initial Switch block. Each custom step outputs log notes. If a step fails, you can open the Activity Log and inspect the log messages.
You are also able to view the source of each step by opening it from the CUSTOM steps palette and selecting the step's SCRIPT tab. As with all xMatters custom steps, the scripting language is JavaScript running in the xMatters cloud environment rather than on the browser.