Weboperator with Approval Support

[#1]

Overview

The overall goal of the Weboperator with Approvals package is to provide an example of how to provide a web based form that allows non vCO Administrators to answer the vCO Workflow element “User Interaction.” The user interaction element may be answered by certain vCO users depending on the setting of the “ldap.group” property of the element:

• null – any user capable of logging in to vCO may answer the user interaction
• LDAP Group specified – Only members of the specified LDAP Group and vCO Administrators may answer the user interaction

Under many circumstances, a group of approvers will be designated to answer a given user interaction as part of an approval based workflow. It is not optimal to require these approvers to use the vCO Client as it introduces a high level of complication for what should be a simple task: approve a request. Instead, it is preferred to provide a web based solution for these approvals. This package modifies the core “weboperator” webview to allow such a solution. By default, anyone who logs into the weboperator webview has a full view into the workflow tree, tasks, workflows waiting for inputs, and policies. The modifications to the weboperator in this package are as follows:

• No change in appearance or functionality for members of the group specified as vCO Administrators
• Non vCO Administrators may login to the weboperator directly, but will be presented with a message that the webview is for approvals only and will have no links other than to logout of the webview
• The Header for users will say “Approval” instead of “weboperator”
• Uses will be able to login and answer the form on the url generated by the vCO Scriptable task call:
  workflow.getAnswerUrl();

Prerequisites

In order for this package to be installed and demonstrated as designed, the following prerequisites must be met:

• vCenter Orchestrator 5.1 installed and configured
• vmo.properties file updated with the following line: (Allows for proper display of HTML in the approval webpage)
  com.vmware.o11n.webview.htmlescaping.disabled = true
• Mail plugin must be configured

Installation and Configuration

Please do not simply import this package without reading the attached PDF. Follow the step-by-step instructions and screenshots contained in the PDF in order to implement this example successfully.