Workflow version control

[colinj]

Howdy all,

Here's my question for today.

I see that I can set a version number for workflows and vCO does a nice job of paying attention to this so I don't overwrite a new version with an older one. And there is a nice "Show version history. . ." link so I can see the comments and timing on the different versions of a given workflow. Both of these are awesome tools. What I don't see is a way to move backward in a workflow's version history. What's the plan for version control and/or maintenance with vCO?

What I would love would be a way to plug in to an external version control system (trac, git, etc.) so I could use already available tools to manage workflows. I know that I have the option of exporting workflows and then using version control with the exported file. That's not perfect as the exported files seem to be in binary format and so can't really take advantage of version control systems.

Thanks!

Colin J.

[cdecanini_]

Hi,

The version control is only for history ATM. Previous versions of the elements are not kept.

For now you need to export and save to your version control system.

Christophe.

[ahola]

Wondering if there is a way to export an entire hierarchy under a given folder in one shot? We have a folder containing bunch of folders which in turn contain various workflows. For a given release of our application that runs on top of these vco workflows, we would like to take a snapshot corresponding to the release.

Thanks in advance.

[igorstoyanov]

Yes. You can create a package and then select the folder that contains the workflows. Then the package system in vCO will include all workflows in this folder and will take care of all dependencies in those workflows (sub-workflows, actions, resources, configuration elements and so on). It would also include any workflows in sub-folders. So basically, it should cover exactly the use case you described.

So, go to packages / create a new one / edit mode / use the tree selector in order to select the folder.  That should do the job. Then, you can export the package.

[ahola]

Thanks much Igor! That helps and I was able to validate it as well.

[mobcdi]

If I may can I expand this discussion to ask if its possible to increment version numbers from within workflows/actions not just from the UI? in particular resource elements as I would like to increment the version number each time a resource element is updated in code so operators can view the history of when and by whch operator it was altered using the versionHistory, the actual contents of the resource element don't need to be versions but it would be very useful if there was a way to supply the versionLevel (major, minor, point) to increment and the comment to include and have vCO add in the date and operator details when the method e.g  .IncrementVersion was called

[tschoergez]

Hi!

AFAIK it's not possible to change the version of vCO Content elements (including Resource Elements) programatically. You can just read the current version via the 'version' attribute of a ResourceElement object.

If the functionality is important enough, maybe it's worth to create an own version history external, e.g. in a changelog-file, or using the JDBC- or SQL-Plugin to store the informtation in an external database.

(One idea pops up: Most of the newer Plugins (like SQL, AMQP, SOAP).... create workflows programatically. so maybe it's possible to create a vCO Plugins which allows what you want to do. However, I guess that is not part of the official SDK, so that was even more effort than the external changelog, and high risk that it's just impossible.)

Cheers,

Joerg

[tough_siberian_]

Hello colinj

If you haven't found the solution yet, then you may check this:

vFLOWer Toolkit | ByteLife

Dmitri.