Overview of actions

Actions are the easy to use, intuitive building blocks for your OneBot workflows. Use them within the editor to build the flexible workflows your team needs. Actions are simple to add, to arrange and configure.

OneBot actions are also the way your processes connect with other systems: OneBot uses its many action integrations to reach out to external information sources and internal resources, bringing these together to create powerful and sophisticated solutions.

Understand actions

What are actions?

Actions are what you use to do work within a workflow. If you need to connect to your ITSM solution, we likely have an integration with their API. If they let you trigger processes within their system, OneBot’s action integrations can bring the power of this right to the hands of your user’s, giving them a simple, straightforward way to access the power of these tools.

Need to trigger an internal process? No problem. Want to talk to an end-user? We can help you do that. Time to hand off to a human agent? Of course, OneBot has you covered.

Action fundamentals

There are some foundational ideas that need to be understood to be able to use the tool successfully. Many people will understand these concepts already (if you are one of them, please feel free to skip ahead.) However, if you are new to configuring information systems, you may find the following helpful:

• Workflows - a sequence of instructions arranged together to do useful work. Once OneBot’s intelligence engine has determined how to help your user, it turns to the array of workflows your team have created, and selects the most effective one for your end-user’s needs. See the introduction to workflows for more information.

• Core actions - actions that are central to how OneBot functions. These actions are available to all installations and are found directly within the actions menu.

• Integrations - how OneBot helps you get more from your tools. Most software services offer connections to the outside, providing secure ways to get things done. Understanding these connection protocols, however, can be challenging. OneBot’s integration magic lets your team leverage these opportunities without needing a degree in engineering.

• Expressions - a set of simple, pre-made commands able to help you perform calculations and grab hold of data. Expressions are used frequently within actions and workflows so knowing about them at the start can be helpful. See the section on Expressions for more.

Actions work together

The outcome of one action is available for consumption in downstream actions and expressions. Use the tag control to reveal the output of an upstream action and string together multiple action outputs to create rich and complex behaviours throughout your workflows.

Action scope

OneBot actions are powerful and far-reaching. You can use them to access information and trigger processes in your own systems, in third-party resources, and with service providers. They can be used to start other actions and workflows, to store data and automate internal processes. And can be used to communicate with end users, your colleagues and customers.

Create and manage actions

Adding actions to workflows

One bot makes it easy to add actions to your workflows:

1. Inside a workflow, click the ‘plus’ insert button on the workflow path to open the action menu panel.

2. Choose a Core Action, or use one of OneBot’s many integration actions.

   1. Select an action from the top half of the menu to insert a Core Action: Core Actions are available as standard with all OneBot subscriptions.

   2. Select an integration from the lower half of the menu to access actions made available with your OneBot Integrations.

3. Use the configuration panel to the actions settings. See the Editing Actions section below for more information on the configuration panel.

4. Click anywhere back in the main view to close the configuration panel and return to the workflow editor.

5. Save the workflow.

Deleting actions from workflows

Actions can be removed from workflows by deleting them using the delete button in their configuration panel. All deleted actions and their configurations are non-recoverable once deleted. To delete an action:

1. Click an action to open its configuration panel.

2. Click ‘Delete Step’.

3. Confirm deletion using the dialog.

4. Save the workflow.

Take care to remove references to deleted actions as these are unsupported. For example, the User Email action captures a address, making it available to other parts of the workflow. If the User Email block is removed, any actions that attempt to use the email address will fail.

Edit actions

To edit actions, simply click on the action in the workflow. The revealed configuration panel allows you to make changes to the action’s title and description, as well as the features specific to that action. Workflows show the effect of changes to their actions once they are saved and published.

Use the action configuration panel

Access an action’s configuration panel by clicking on the action in the workflow. The configuration panel enables you to:

1. Rename your action - helpful when you want to understand your workflow ‘at a glance,’ the name appear beside the action in the workflow editor.

2. Add a description to your action - optional, but may help others to use the workflow.

3. Configure action specific settings - almost all actions have specific fields and configuration options controlled by the configuration panel: find these fields in the ‘settings’ subsection.

4. Enter action specific data and behaviour - fields in the ‘settings’ subsection allow you to add Tags with embedded expressions or the output from other workflow actions.

Use expressions within actions

Fields in the settings section of an action allow you to enter expressions. Examples include adding numbers and converting the case of strings. To use expressions within an action:

1. Click an action to open its configuration panel.

2. Click into one of the fields in the settings section of the panel.

3. Type ‘/’ to open the tag control and reveal a list of available expressions and actions.

4. Choose an expression from the list of available options. The list is hierarchical: choosing a category will reveal nested options and further categories to select from.

5. Press the ‘Esc’ key at any time to cancel expression selection and close the tag control.

6. The expression editor will either close automatically once you’ve made your choice of expression, or a new dialogue for the expression will open for further configuration.

Use an action within an action

Actions are designed to provide their output to subsequent actions and expressions. To use an action output inside another action or expression:

1. Type ‘/’ to open the tag control while editing the field of an action or expression. This reveals a list of available expressions and actions.

2. Choose an action from the list of upstream actions that have outputs. The list is hierarchical: choosing a category may reveal further nested options and categories to select from.

3. Press the ‘Esc’ key at any time to cancel action selection and close the tag control.

4. The expression editor will either close automatically once you’ve made your choice of action, or a new dialogue for the action will open for further configuration.

Using actions

Comments on using actions

There are some points to be aware of when using actions:

• Deleting an action does not cause downstream actions to validate their references. Running a workflow with actions containing references to missing actions will fail.

• Action outputs only become available to downstream actions and expressions. If you can’t find an action output that you were expecting it probably means an upstream action is missing or has been incorrectly configured.

• Actions are dynamic. The settings and fields within some actions can be changed and updated depending on the resources they link to. For example, actions that use Adaptive Cards can have additional fields added to them dynamically depending on the card they are associated with. If you do not see a field you were expecting to see, ensure the action has been associated with the appropriate card in your Adaptive Card Manager.

v3.0