After you configure your Orchestrator instance, register it with your vCenter Server Appliance and install the vRealize Orchestrator plug-in, you can log in to the vSphere Client and view the topology of your system.
With the current version of the plug-in you must log in with a user who is a member of the administrators group configured in the vRealize Orchestrator authentication provider.
Navigate to Menu > vRealize Orchestrator. The vRealize Orchestrator home screen appears.
The topmost panel shows details and statistics about the vRealize Orchestrator instance: version, build number, list of managed vCenter servers and several useful statistics about the Orchestrator server.
The Managed vCenters panel displays the vCenter servers managed by the Orchestrator. If the vCenter server is part of an Enhanced Linked Mode group, all vCenter servers in the group are listed.
When you expand a vCenter Server, a datagrid with the registered vRealize Orchestrator servers is displayed.
If you register multiple Orchestrator instances as vCenter Server extensions, each Orchestrator server appears in a separate panel. When expanded, the Managed vCenters panel displays all registered Orchestrator instances. For example, if your system has a single vCenter server managed by two vRealize Orchestrator servers, the Home screen would look similar to this:
You can associate Orchestrator workflows with inventory object types.
When you run or schedule workflow from the vRealize Orchestrator context menu action for an object from the inventory, you can run or schedule only workflows associated with the type of the inventory object.
The vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Client has 18 Context Actions by default. These are the same context actions which are available by default in the legacy vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Web Client (Flex-based GUI). You can customise the default list of context actions.
Navigate to Menu > vRealize Orchestrator and click Context Actions tab.
The list with context actions appears. Each item in the datagrid represents a workflow association to an object type, called Context Action. The first 20 context actions are displayed. You can view the total number of context actions and navigate through the remaining items using the buttons in the bottom right.
If you have multiple vRealize Orchestrator instances registered as vCenter Server extension, a dropdown menu is displayed on top of the screen. Select the Orchestrator server whose context actions you want to view and manage. If you have a single Orchestrator server, the dropdown menu is not shown.
The Batch action column shows whether the workflow can be run on multiple objects. When batch action is enabled, then you can select multiple inventory objects and run or schedule the workflow from the vRealize Orchestrator menu. To filter context actions by batch action setting, click the filter button in the Batch action column and select a value.
You can filter context actions by different properties. Start typing in the upper left text input with a looking glass image. Several different options appear below the text input and you can select one of them.
The first search option filters context actions by any property. The next search options filter context actions by the property name displayed before the colon. For instance if you type "snapshot" and select the search option "workflowName: snapshot", the search results contain only context actions whose workflow name matches "snapshot".
You can enter multiple search options. The list contains the context actions which match all search items entered in the text input with a looking glass image.
Navigate to Menu > vRealize Orchestrator.
Click Context Actions tab.
Assign Workflows as Context Actions dialog appears. The datagrid displays all workflows on the Orchestrator server.
You can filter workflows by different properties. Start typing in the text input above the datagrid. Several options appear below the the text input and you can select one of them.
The first search option filters workflows by any property. The next search options filter context actions by the property name displayed before the colon. For instance if you type "1.1" and select the search option "version: 1.1", the search results contain only workflows whose version matches "1.1".
From the filtered workflows in the datagrid, select the ones that you want to assign as context actions. Note that the current version of the plug-in allows selection of the currently visible workflows.
Click the Type of object dropdown menu. The inventory object types to which you can associate Orchestrator workflows appear. Select the object type to which you want to assign the selected workflows.
You can associate workflows to multiple object types. Click the plus button on the left of the Type of object dropdown menu. A new dropdown menu appears where you can select another object type to which the workflows will be associated. Use the plus and minus buttons to further customise the list of inventory object types.
Click Allow multiple selection checkbox if you want the new context actions to have the batch action setting enabled.
The dialog is closed. For each selected workflow a new context action is created. The Context Actions datagrid is automatically updated and contains the newly added context actions.
Navigate to Menu > vRealize Orchestrator.
Click Context Actions tab.
Edit Assignment dialog appears. The Type of object dropdown menus show the existing object type associations. The Allow multiple selection checkbox show whether batch action setting is enabled.
Using the Type of object dropdown menus in combination with the plus and minus images, you can select the object types to which the context will be assigned.
Click Allow multiple selection checkbox if you want to update the batch action setting of the context action.
The dialog is closed. The Context Actions datagird is automatically updated and shows the updated context action.
Navigate to Menu > vRealize Orchestrator.
Click Context Actions tab.
Confirmation dialog is displayed.
The confirmation dialog is closed. The context actions are deleted.
You can export the context actions from an Orchestrator instance to an XML file.
This will create and save a file on your local file system. The file contains the context actions from the current Orchestrator server. You can then import this file to another Orchestrator server, backup this configuration etc.
You can import list of context actions from another Orchestrator instance.
Select an XML file which contains the exported context actions from another Orchestrator server.
When import completes, the context actions of the current Orchestrator server are overwritten with the contents of the imported file.