In this blog post, we will learn how to manually use the configuration element in vRealize Orchestrator. The configuration element stores data, configuration or anything for workflows and actions in the vRO. For example; We can store the network configuration of the virtual machine in the configuration element. In this way, if we want to change the network configuration, simply update the configuration element.

First, let’s run a workflow without a configuration element. Next, let’s bind the attributes in this workflow with a configuration element and run the workflow. In this way, we better understand the benefits of the configuration element.

Without Using Configuration Element

I created a workflow that creates subfolders. The configuration element is not used in this workflow. First let’s run the workflow without using the configuration element. I have listed the description of the attributes below.

• count: How many subfolder to create,
• prefix: Prefix of subfolder,
• suffix: Suffix of subfolder,
• folder: Parent of subfolders,
• counter: For loop,
• subfolderName: Name of subfolder ( will change with loop ).

The workflow schema is given below.After running the workflow, it wrote the information of the folders that were created on the log tab. The purpose of the workflow is to create subfolders under the parent folder.

Subfolders:

Using Configuration Element

We ran the workflow without using the configuration element. Now let’s create a configuration element and define some of the attributes used in the workflow here. These are the count, prefix, and suffix attributes. Then, we can run the workflow using the configuration element.

We can now bind the configuration element to the workflow. In the workflow, go to the General> Attributes tab. Let’s click the blue arrow to the right of the attribute.

I selected the attributes to link in window that opened. We can see that it is linked to the attribute section.

Let’s bind all the attributes in the configuration element.

The configuration element will provide attributes in the workflow. If we change the attributes in the configuration element, the attributes in the workflow will also change. The configuration element links both value and description to the linked workflow.

Let’s change the attributes in the configuration element as follows and run the workflow.

Subfolders:

The attributes we modified in the configuration element were used in the workflow. We have changed the attributes in configuration element without changing the attributes in the workflow. So, we just changing the configuration elemet and ran the workflow. And what did that do? We have reduced interaction in the workflow and provided modular programming.

You can find the workflow and configuration element used in the blog post on my GitHub page.

Hopefully this post has been informative for you. If you have a question, opinion or request about the article, you can contact us from the comments below or my email address. If you think this post is informative to others, be social and share it on social media! Thank you for reading !!