How to automatically start a workflow?

[VMwareUser22011]

Hi community,

I am planning to develop a plug-in for vCO and have some queries. I hope you might be able to guide me in the right direction!

While developing a vCO plug-in, is there a way or is it possible if I can somehow monitor state of my objects ( which I want to expose in vCO) and as soon as the state changes, a pre-built workflow gets executed in vCO. I somehow think it can be possible like this:

1. Expose all the objects and monitor its state.

2. If state changes, invoke vCO web services to execute a workflow.

For example: I would like to write a plug-in, a small one, exposing only some objects, that when VM state changes from power off to ON, a workflow in vCO gets automatically executed. But this functionality has to be withing plug-in design.

Can anyone of you help me in this?

Thanks.

[cdecanini_ · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The mechanism to implement in this case is a trigger. The solar system example plug-in provide an example of the use of triggers. You can also find may references to triggers in the developpers guide.

A trigger can then be used to resume a "wait for event" worfklow element or to trigger a vCO policy that can start any configured workflow.

The vCenter plug-in already implements this on VM power states.

Christophe.

[VMwareUser22011]

Thanks Christophe, appreciate your help for pointing me in the right direction.