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Workflow Studio 1.1 is now available for download on MyCitrix. With this release we have also included the first set of activity libraries for Citrix products (and some Windows products and technologies as well). The installer will allow you to select which libraries you would like to install. You will find the following files on MyCitrix for download:
- WFStudio.iso - This is an .iso image file that contains all of the Workflow Studio installers and the redistributable components in a packaged CD image that supports auto-run. This is very useful for making your own CD/DVD or for installing Workflow Studio onto a virtual machine.
If you want to download the individual installers they are available separately as well:
- Setup.exe - There has been no change to the setup program. It still checks your system for the necessary pre-requisites and then automatically launches the correct MSI file for your platform
- WFStudio.msi - This is an update to the core components of Workflow Studio for 32-bit systems.
- WFStudio_x64.msi - This is an update to the core components of Workflow Studio for 64-bit systems.
- WFStudioActivities.msi - Activity Library package for 32-bit systems.
- WFStudioActivities_x64.msi - Activity Library package for 64-bit systems.
We will be releasing all supported activity libraries as updates to this installer package going forward. Currently, it contains the following:
- Citrix NetScaler
- Citrix XenServer
- Active Directory
- Group Policy
- Networking
- Windows
- WMI
- Workflow Math Functions
You will need to upgrade to version 1.1 of the core product before you can install the activity library package, and you will also need to manually run the activity library installer after upgrading to 1.1. In the future we will be updating the Setup.exe program to handle this installation automatically.
The 1.1 installer will detect 1.0 if installed and automatically upgrade it for you.
I recommend having a separate Development machine and Test machine for working with the SDK. I have mine set up as follows:
- Development machine - contains Visual Studio 2008, Workflow Studio 1.0, and the Workflow Studio 1.0 SDK (C# templates).
- Test machine - just has Workflow Studio 1.0 on it for testing activities created on the development machine. Having a separate box for testing allows you to be sure that your activity works on a non-development machine.
One thing you may notice is that I have the full Workflow Studio 1.0 product on my development machine as well. The benefit of placing Workflow Studio on the development machine is that it allows you to step through your code in Visual Studio by attaching to the key Workflow Studio processes. I'll go into more detail on that later in this blog series. Technically you can get by without installing Workflow Studio on your dev machine by copying over 5 key DLLs from another Workflow Studio installation. The Activity Developers Guide provides details on how to locate and copy these DLLs if you wanted a more minimal installation.
1 - My initial development machine layout:
When I started building my Dev machine I had a barebones Windows Server 2003 installation:
- Windows Server 2003 SP1
- IIS with ASP/ASP.NET enabled
2 - Install the prereqs for Visual Studio 2008 and Workflow Studio 1.0:
Next, I installed the prereqs for Workflow Studio and Visual Studio listed below.
3 - Install Visual Studio 2008
Third, I installed the Visual Studio product.
- During installation, select at least the C# language since the WFS Activity templates are based on C#. You can choose other languages as well if you want to use this machine for other purposes later on.
- After installation, launch Visual Studio and select the C# development layout on the first time use screen. I've tried both the VB IDE layout and C# IDE layout and the C# layout makes it a lot easier to set up the "stepping through code" settings for later on.
4 - Install Workflow Studio 1.0
Fourth, I installed Workflow Studio 1.0.
- During installation, point to your SQL Database installation (mine was local SQLEXPRESS). When configuring the Runtime Service, I added one service that is tied to my local admin account.
- After installation, launch Workflow Studio and ensure you can access the Workflow Studio Console
5 - Install Workflow Studio 1.0 SDK
Finally, I installed the Workflow Studio SDK. This installation adds 4 templates to Visual Studio (2 project templates and 2 class templates)
- During installation, take all of the defaults.
- After installation, launch Visual Studio and verify that these templates are present. Essentially, try to create a new C# project and the Workflow Studio project templates should be listed there.
After completing the final step, you're all set to start writing custom activities. If this is your first time developing an activity I definitely recommend checking out the Activity Developers Guide that explains how to create a few sample activity projects.
Blogs in this series:
- Getting Started
- Setting up your Visual Studio development environment (this one)
- Anatomy of a Workflow Studio activity project
- Testing your Workflow Studio activity project
- Stepping through your Visual Studio code
I've been using the Workflow Studio SDK for about a month and just wanted to share with everyone some things I've learned along the way. I figured a good approach to get the word out to our partners, customers, and Consulting teams about how to use the Workflow Studio SDK was to try a blogging series. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll blog about some of the fundamentals of using the Workflow Studio SDK. This is part 1 of the series in answering some of the beginning questions.
What is the Workflow Studio SDK?
The Workflow Studio SDK is a series of C# templates for Visual Studio 2008 that allows you to create activities for Workflow Studio. There are two types of activities you can create using the templates:
- Powershell Activity - this is an activity based on a Powershell command. When you choose this activity type within Visual Studio, the Powershell Converter opens where you select the Powershell command you want to transform into an activity. The Powershell Converter then creates the activity code based on the Powershell command(s) that were selected. You can then further modify this code to customize as you see fit.
- Standard Activity - this is an activity used for standard actions not based on Powershell commands. Essentially, you will create a standard activity if you are not creating an activity based on a Powershell command. The code you get looks about 95% the same with a few differences.
What skills do I need to use the Workflow Studio SDK?
From a programming side I would say you need a basic background in using Visual Studio and C#. The templates are only available in C#, so if you are a VB or VB.NET programmer you'll have to walk on the other side of the fence here.
My personal coding experience mainly comes from web development (HTML, JavaScript, ASP, etc.) several years back. I'm not an extensive coder but I do understand the object-oriented programming principles. Using the SDK was my first time to extensively use C# and if you understand coding principles and object-oriented programming, it's really a matter of learning the new syntax. For example, for me I found myself asking things like "I know how to create properties in VB, how do I do this in C#?"
In addition to the recommendations above, I would definitely recommend playing with the Workflow Studio product before you start using the SDK (that's probably a given 
). You'll want to understand how activities tie to each other through binding, as you'll be creating "bindable" properties in your code.
Using the SDK might sound pretty complex at the beginning, but the templates you are given have so many comments that they really guide you through the process as well.
Where can I find the Workflow Studio SDK?
The SDK can be found on the Citrix Developer Network site (http://community.citrix.com/cdn/wf/sdks).
Is there a Developer's Guide for getting started with the SDK?
Yes, a great guide is available on the Citrix Developer Network site (http://community.citrix.com/cdn/wf/sdks). If you are new to using the SDK this guide is a must for getting started. You should come here first before venturing out on your own. This guide will walk you through creating two sample activities:
- "GetDate" Powershell activity - creates an activity based on the "Get-Date" powershell command. This activity returns the current date/time of the system.
- "AdvancedDelay" Standard activity - creates an activity that allows you to specify a time delay for your workflow. For example, in Workflow Studio if you want the runtime to pause a certain length of time before continuing with executing the rest of the workflow, you can add the AdvancedDelay activity to pause a certain amount of time.
Upcoming blogs in this series:
Load Balancing Auto-Configuration for SAP using Workflow Studio and NetScaler
At the tail end of our certification process at SAP, Citrix engaged in a unique opportunity to make use of the SAP APIs, using Workflow Studio to auto-configure the Citrix NetScaler for Load Balancing. The way it works is, Workflow Studio polls the SAP API, reads the response, and then based on the results in the response, configures the NetScaler Load Balancing groups that map directly to the SAP servers running in the server farm.
SAP has a community group dedicated to the development of their APIs, please reference the latest blog post Catching Up with Deployment and Operations Automation, describes the SAP APIs.
The SAP Community Definition Group (CDG) - titled "PCDG 97 NetWeaver Infrastructure APIs for Network Solutions" - is focused on automation of network-application integrated configuration and operation. As the group title implies, the SAP NetWeaver technology platform includes APIs, which are used by the NetScaler ADCs (load balancers) to auto-configure themselves as proxies for multi-instance SAP application systems. Using Citrix Workflow Studio, the SAP APIs are polled on a regular basis so that the NetScaler ADCs can react to SAP application instance changes during production runtime.
If another application instance is brought up, let's say for providing more computing capacity for an increasing end-user load, or if an instance is brought down temporarily for maintenance, Workflow Studio communicates with the NetScaler ADC to adjust load balancing automatically without any manual administrator intervention. There is no more wait, or lengthy change management required to provision applications.
Workflow Studio, NetScaler and SAP API Use Cases:
Use Case 1: (auto-configure new SAP services).
Workflow Studio sends a URL request to the SAP Message Server, and receives a response. Workflow Studio parse's the response, looking for specific SAP generated patterns. WFS then uses this information to configure a Load Balancing Virtual Server inside of the Citrix NetScaler.
Use Case 2: (dynamic configuration).
Workflow Studio repeatedly queries the SAP API. WFS studio can determine hostnames, ip addresses, port numbers, and whether an SAP server is coming online or going down. When a SAP server comes online/goes down - WFS detects this change, and then takes action on the Citrix NetScaler, to add/remove the SAP service from the Load Balancing group - automatically.
Use Case 3: (graceful shutdown).
Workflow Studio queries the SAP API, determines a SAP server is going down, and based on the response, waits until all existing sessions have been retired, before removing the server from the Load Balancing group . During the shutdown period, no new sessions are added to that SAP server, providing a graceful shutdown of the SAP service. This way, there are no TCP resets sent to existing sessions. New logins are routed to a different server.
Read the SAP article here.
Tap into the power of AppExpert!
We had a question on the support forums about modifying the database used for Workflow Studio, which defaults to 'WFDB'. All the SQL scripts are provided for you in the Workflow Studio install, and we anticipated our customers wanting to have multiple databases on a single server or just changing the name from the default 'WFDB' name. In fact, if the SQL Admin wants more control they can customize as much as needed.
I wrote up an article to cover the process:
http://community.citrix.com/display/wf/Customizing+Your+Workflow+Studio+Database
If anyone tries this and runs into problems let me know
I have a lot of ideas for posts that I think will only be interesting to the software developer - the third audience of Workflow Studio. I started wondering just how many people reading this blog would consider themselves to fall into this category. Go back and read the post on the Three Audiences of Workflow Studio and then vote here to tell me which group you fall into. If you cross over more than one of them, pick the one you are most interested in reading about.
| Which audience are you? | Choose |
|---|---|
| IT Operations |  |
| Server Administrator | |
| Software Developer | |
In my last post I told you about the breakout session on Workflow Studio I will be doing and I hope to see you there:
http://community.citrix.com/x/FYG1Aw
If you are coming to Synergy I will also be hosting a Learning Lab on Workflow Studio and Citrix Receiver. The Learning Lab format gives us 3 hours to dive into the details, so if you want to learn more about building workflows to orchestrate the Delivery Center - sign up now!
Here are the details:
Title: Hands-on with the Citrix Delivery Center - featuring Workflow Studio orchestration and Citrix Receiver
Session Number: iForumLL706
Track(s): Learning Labs
Room: Premier Ballroom 306
This workshop provides attendees a chance to get hands-on experience with Receiver and Workflow Studio in a Citrix Delivery Center environment. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding for the architecture of these products and best practices for deploying them. Attendees will learn how to create and configure workflows that orchestrate functionality like power management, user provisioning, dynamic resource allocation, disaster recovery and product automation. Attendees will also learn how to configure the Receiver and leverage it to easily provide user access to applications and desktops—simplifying client management for IT.
Prerequisites:
Basic understanding of Citrix XenApp, Citrix NetScaler and Windows administration.
Students are required to bring their own laptops.
This session is held:
• Tuesday, May 5 at 11:30 a.m.
• Tuesday, May 5 at 3:00 p.m
• Wednesday, May 6 at 11:30 a.m.
• Wednesday, May 6 at 3:00 p.m.
Cost Savings, Green Benefits and Improved Server Management.
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery, recently announced that leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) manufacturer SAP AG will be virtualizing an estimated 500 servers with Citrix® XenServer™ by the middle of 2009. SAP has also deployed Citrix® XenApp™ application virtualization technology to deliver applications to both SAP employees and external partners. In addition, SAP expects to receive the benefits that a combined XenServer and XenApp solution provides - such as streaming standardized workload images and superior management functionality - which the company anticipates will generate a 35 percent savings in terminal server costs.
SAP was looking to consolidate its server infrastructure and also wanted to create a much more flexible and dynamic computing architecture. Following an extensive test of XenServer, the company decided to move forward with a multi-stage roll-out of the server virtualization solution onto 500 servers, initially in the company's Saint Leon Rot, Germany office. In the next phase of the project, the servers that power the worldwide training centers will be virtualized, followed by the project management division with several hundred development, test, and support environments. After the server virtualization project in Germany is complete, the roll-out will continue at the end of 2009 to SAP's offices in Asia and the United States.
SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver more than 40 applications, including Microsoft Office and the SAP Business Suite software, to its entire user base. In total, there are more than 50,000 end users who access the XenApp infrastructure to work on tasks such as product development and support.
Its powerful AppExpert!
Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V provides customers with a powerful set of advanced virtualization management capabilities that extend the enterprise management capabilities of Hyper-V and System Center to help make virtualized environments more scalable, more manageable and more agile.
Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V includes:
- Automated lab management enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
- Advanced storage integrationusing Citrix StorageLink™ technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
- Dynamic provisioning serviceslets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
- Hypervisor interoperability makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.
You'll find the beta software here. (If you don't have a My Citrix account, you'll be asked to create one first; if you have one, you may be asked to log in.)
Support for this beta release is being provided via an online forum where you can share your experiences with Citrix personnel and other users. To access the Essentials for Hyper-V Early Release forum send us an email with forum in the subject line to #CVSM_support@citrix.com. Please include your My Citrix username in the email.
Please check out the advanced capabilities of Citrix Essentials for your Microsoft Hyper-V environment, and help us deliver the best virtualization management experience we can.
I will be speaking about Workflow Studio at the upcoming Citrix Synergy event. Come by and here about what is coming next with Workflow Studio and if you have ideas for things you want covered, post them here or email me.
Here are the details:
Title: Go with the flow - Workflow Studio simplifies IT management and reduces costs
Session Number: iForum207
Track(s): iForum
Date / Time: May 7, 10:00 am - 10:50 am
Room: Premier Ballroom 310
According to industry analysts, 80 percent of unplanned downtime is due to "people failures" and 80 percent of IT budgets are spent just keeping the business running. Citrix Delivery Center simplifies IT by eliminating manual processes that are labor intensive and error prone with Workflow Studio, a process automation solution that enables you to compose, integrate and orchestrate rule-based workflows across your IT infrastructure. Power management, dynamic resource allocation and disaster recovery are just a few of the solutions that can be automated using Workflow Studio. Go with the flow and turn your IT infrastructure into a dynamic delivery center.
In this session you will learn:
• What Workflow Studio is and how it works
• How to build workflows that reduce power usage and maximize server utilization
• How to integrate Workflow Studio with your management systems
Yesterday Citrix announced the newest Citrix product that builds on top of the Microsoft Windows Server platform - Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V. Essentials for Hyper-V has four primary components -
- Automated lab management enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
- Advanced storage integration using Citrix StorageLink™ technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
- Dynamic provisioning services lets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
- Hypervisor interoperability makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.
This short video below by Peter Blum reviews the Advanced StorageLink capability built into Essentials with Hyper-V.
I will post more videos and info on Essentials from Hyper-V from VMWorld Europe.
I just posted a video tutorial on using the Workflow Studio SDK to to convert a PowerShell cmdlet to an activity library on the Multimedia section of the Workflow Studio CDN site
This tutorial walks you through creating an activity library from the Get-Date PowerShell cmdlet just like the tutorial in the Developer's guide. The SDK and Developer Guide is available here:
http://community.citrix.com/cdn/wf/sdks
Here is the video:
Getting Started with the Workflow Studio SDK
Get started converting your own favorite PowerShell cmdlets and let us know what you find.
I posted two video tutorials to the Multimedia section of the Workflow Studio CDN site:
http://community.citrix.com/cdn/wf/multimedia/
These tutorials walk you through the two tutorials that are included with Workflow Studio in the Help menu. These tutorials are also in the User Guide which can be downloaded on the Workflow Studio download page. Hopefully these videos provide a little additional insight into the process.
Here are direct links to the videos:
Getting Started with Workflow Studio
Getting Started with the Workflow Studio Designer
Let me know what you think...
In my post on the "Three Audiences of Workflow Studio" I tried to explain how different features of Workflow Studio are used by different audiences. With the release of our Developer Toolkit we now also have 3 tutorials available that correspond to the 3 audiences:
- IT Operations - There is a tutorial available from the main Workflow Studio console (the Management console) on the Help...Getting Started menu that walks you through the process of downloading a workflow, importing it, and then scheduling it to run.
- Server Administrator - There is a tutorial available from the Workflow Studio Designer on the Help...User Guide menu that walks you through the process of creating the same workflow that is available for download above.
- Software Developer - There is a tutorial available in the Developer's Guide that walks you through the process of creating new activity libraries - both converting from PowerShell and writing from scratch.
The first two tutorials that are available within Workflow Studio are also part of a larger User's Guide that is available on the product download page.
The final tutorial is available on the SDK download page.
We have just released a developer toolkit that will make creating activity libraries much easier. This toolkit contains a set of templates for Visual Studio and a PowerShell Converter utility. With the PowerShell Converter you can automatically generate an activity library from any PowerShell snap-in that you have installed. You can download it here:
http://community.citrix.com/cdn/wf/sdks
If you are a part of the Software Developer audience for Workflow Studio you definitely want to check this out. If you have comments or questions you can use the Activity Library Development forum.
***Update: As of the 2.0 release we now include 143 activities with the product, including libraries for Netscaler, XenServer, and XenApp. We keep adding more, and if you have specific requests, please email me...
Alex posted in our forums that he was extremely disappointed in the 1.0 release of Workflow Studio because of a lack of libraries/templates for use with Citrix products. We are working on releasing libraries for Citrix products, as well as libraries that integrate with Active Directory, Group Policy, Power Management, and Windows. I appreciate the criticism, as it made me realize that we haven't done a good job of describing the target audience of this 1.0 release. I would like to take the opportunity to explain the different audiences that Workflow Studio appeals to, and why we released 1.0 as it is. Hopefully this post will help to explain how the different features of Workflow Studio appeal to these audiences and also clarify how it can be used today and where we are going in the future.
To make sure we are all on the same page, I want to start by defining the audiences that I will refer back to later. The titles I chose are not important, but hopefully the descriptions will help you to place where this fits in your organization. In the IT industry people often wear many hats and don't fit neatly into a classification.
- IT Operations - This role is responsible for ensuring that IT systems are working and available on a wide scale, but would not typically do development or scripting tasks.
- Server Administrator - This role is responsible for specific server workloads and is intimately familiar with the software running on a system. They are comfortable with batch files, scripting, PowerShell, etc. but would not be comfortable doing traditional software development.
- Software Developer - This role is defined by people who write software that is either sold (Software Companies, System Integrators, Consultants, etc.) or used internally by other groups (often including the above two audiences.)
Workflow Studio is built on top of two technologies from Microsoft - Windows PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation. Linking these technologies to the audiences from above for PowerShell would be the Server Administrator, and for Workflow Foundation would be the Software Developer. Our intent with Workflow Studio is to merge these two technologies together and offer solutions that appeal to the IT Operations staff (and Server Administrators who are looking for tools, but are too busy to script solutions to all their needs themselves.) As a result of being built on top of PowerShell and Workflow Foundation, we offer features that the other two audiences will also find useful.
As Alex pointed out, the 1.0 release is not very interesting to the IT Operations audience yet because there isn't a large base of activity libraries and workflows available today. The Software Developer audience on the other hand can use 1.0 today with the publicly available APIs for our Citrix products (and if they choose, share or sell their work to the community at large.)
Now I want to take a look at specific features and functionality of Workflow Studio and how they map to these audiences:
IT Operations
The intended process of using Workflow Studio for this audience would be to download workflows (and activity libraries) that solve specific problems that this audience faces. All that needs to be done after downloading the workflows is to schedule or execute them as applications that solve those specific needs.
Workflow Studio has a community tab that links the product back to the Citrix Developer Network (CDN). Citrix, our partners, and the community at large can post activity libraries and workflows that can be downloaded and used without any need to write scripts or code. We built in a tutorial workflow called ExportServices that you can access through the Help menu to see how this process is intended to work. We plan to leverage this mechanism to release activity libraries and workflows to address specific problems faced in deploying the Citrix Delivery Center and the Citrix Cloud Center. We are also looking to our partners and community to build additional libraries and workflows that this audience will find valuable.
Obviously, this audience will not be well served until pre-built workflows are available that solve problems you face in your environment. Let me know in the comments or through email what types of things you would like to see. As we release activity libraries we will also release workflows that relate to them and as more are available we will be able to release more integrated workflows as well.
Server Administrator
The intended use case for this audience is to build and modify workflows using the Workflow Studio Designer for use either internally or to share with the community.
We are working on some activity libraries that will be available in coming weeks that will facilitate building workflows that leverage your existing VBScript and PowerShell scripts. This functionality will enable this audience to leverage their existing scripting knowledge in a more visual, database-driven, automatically versioned, and easily share-able way. Workflows can be extended through C# with the code-beside feature, so if you know a little bit of programming you can automate almost anything that .NET and C# will allow with just the Designer and not need to go into Visual Studio to build native activity libraries. We have built in some pretty powerful extensions to Workflow Foundation in our Designer that will help you be more productive and make it easy to share within your group, organization, or the community. For instance, the snippets functionality allows you to save templates of individual activity configurations or groups of activities and then export and reuse/share them. Workflows themselves can also be exported and reused/shared as well. The Workflow Studio Designer is accessed by either creating a New Workflow or editing an existing workflow. You can also download other workflows and edit them to see how they were built.
This audience needs activity libraries available, and we are working on several that will be released in coming months. Active Directory, Group Policy, Windows, Power Management, and Citrix product support are all coming soon, so stay tuned.
Software Developer
The intended use case for this audience is to build and share/sell activity libraries that the above two audiences will find useful. These can target Workflow Studio directly or target Workflow Foundation more generically as the vendors in my post on Workflow Studio Extensibility have done.
Activity Libraries are the mechanism for extending Workflow Studio. An activity library is a component defined by Microsoft as part of Workflow Foundation. These can be built without any knowledge of Workflow Studio (standard Workflow Foundation activity libraries), but there are some features of Workflow Studio that we think offer additional value. We make it easy to target Workflow Studio directly with a set of templates for Visual Studio. Specifically, we have a converter that will take existing PowerShell snap-ins and convert them to activity libraries automatically. You will soon be able to download these templates and documentation on automating Workflow Studio on our Download SDKs page.
Workflow Foundation and PowerShell have been around now for more than 2 years. These technologies are robust and stable and can easily be leveraged with the 1.0 release of Workflow Studio. If you are a Citrix partner (or want to be one) and have some ideas in this space, feel free to contact me to discuss.
Hopefully this will help clarify where we are with Workflow Studio and where we are going. Feel free to email me with comments or thoughts on how we can do a better job of addressing your needs with Workflow Studio - whichever audience you may fall into.
Workflow Studio leverages product SDKs to accomplish automation, so I want to take a moment to remind everyone that each of the Citrix products has their own SDK page on the CDN:
- XenApp - http://community.citrix.com/cdn/xa/sdks
- XenServer - http://community.citrix.com/cdn/xs/sdks
- XenDesktop - http://community.citrix.com/cdn/xd/sdks
- NetScaler - http://community.citrix.com/cdn/ns/sdks
Notice the similar link on the Workflow Studio page? Stay tuned...
Hi,
I created an example workflow to monitor the print spooler. It will send out an email and restart the service if its not running. You can tweak it to suit your needs.
Print Spooler Monitor and Alert 
There are more activity libraries planned for the near future so stay tuned for some really cool stuff.
One of the great features of Workflow Studio is that it is designed to be extended. You can build your own activity libraries that add additional graphical objects to the product. The Activity Library standard was created by Microsoft and first hit the scene with the .NET Framework 3.0 release back in Nov. 2006. I did a little searching and found three companies that are offering activity libraries for sale. If you are looking for integration with FTP, ZIP, GZIP, TAR, SSH, and more into your workflows these companies might just save you some time:
- Xceed Activities for WF
- Eldos SecureBlackbox for Business Servers (Workflow Foundation edition)
- /n software Workflow Activities V3
Looking at the feature descriptions, the /n software product really stands out. In addition to FTP and ZIP activities, it has activities that natively support email, paging, RSS, and Instant Messaging. I can think of some good uses for all those communication types when a workflow detects something in the data center that needs my attention immediately. Even more intriguing though is that they have an Amazon S3 activity - automatic backups to the cloud anyone?
The Workflow Studio section of the Citrix Knowledge Center is now live:
http://support.citrix.com/product/wfs/v1.0/
The Knowledge Center is a great resource for all Citrix products and technologies. In fact, there is already a TechNote posted on how to manually edit global parameters through code in Workflow Studio. Gives me an idea for a series of blog posts...