I am working on several vCO workflows those have plug-ins to the respective resources, like vCenter and vCenter Chargeback. Runnnig these WFs from vCO is easy enough by browsing to the particular object. But we have buil portal around the worflows. This portal passes the input parameters. We do not have issues to send string/number values. But when it comes pick an object it is not recognizing the exact string. Any idea?
I recommend reviewing Joerg's post here: http://www.vcoportal.de/2012/01/how-to-find-inventory-objects-when-calling-vco-workflows-via-the-soa... - he provides some good details on getting object info to be used when dealing with vCO via its api.
Alternatively, you could write some workflows that take string inputs and gets the appropriate objects for those inputs and then pass the objects on to the workflow(s) you intend to call. We commonly refer to these as wrapper workflows.
For example, see this thread http://communities.vmware.com/thread/343539 that discusses doing such a technique for AD objects.