Orchestrator Polls

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Run Program Activity issue with Server 2008

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Update 9/7/2012
The issue lies at the OS level w/ the UAC settings.  The changes reflect the differences from 2008 to 2008 R2....
i.e. 
Run all administrators in Admin Approval mode
Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in admin approval mode
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Update 8/30/2012
This appears to only happen when using alternate credentials in the "Run As" field.  I've also repro'd this back in Opalis, so it's not something w/ the updated Run Program activity in SCOrch.  More troubleshooting to come....
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Yesterday I came across an issue w/ the Run Program standard activity.  I have installed the RU2 hotfix release late in July to resolve the issue running the activity against Server 2003/2008/2008SP2.

The activity does run "successfully" in the console.  However, it does not seem to be running the specified command or program in an elevated UAC session.

Pure Output from running "ipconfig /flushdns" via Run Program on a 2008 server:

The requested operation requires elevation.


While expected behavior on a 2008 R2 server:
Windows IP Configuration

Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.


 I've also posted the question to the TechNet forums to see if this is a known issue since RU2.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/scogeneral/thread/b03cb650-4abc-44a6-a097-9c1bf4d979a9

Get Child Runbook Success/Failure via Web Service

As external applications begin to incorporate Orchestrator to automate a subset of tasks in a larger workflow (outside of SCOrch), there may be times that the external app needs to check to see if SCOrch is done processing before continuing on.

In this scenario, the external application would use a POST to invoke the SCOrch workflow and then use two GET calls to poll the runbook's status when it finishes to determine if the SCOrch job was successful or failed.

First the SCOrch parent runbook which is invoked by the POST to the web service.




The key is setting the "Wait for completion" in the Invoke Runbook activity.






The Child Runbook is shown here.



The child runbook utilizes return data so the parent knows if it succeeded or failed.



In this case, if the runbook succeeds it returns Success = true and Success = false if it fails on the copy file or run .Net script.

Now that the Orchestrator runbooks are in order, the external application can invoke it via the web service.

First it would send the http POST payload with parameters.
url:
https://scorch.domain:8443/Orchestrator2012/Orchestrator.svc/Jobs/

payload:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <content type="application/xml">
        <m:properties>
            <d:Parameters>
                &lt;Data&gt;
                &lt;Parameter&gt;
                    &lt;Name&gt;FileName&lt;/Name&gt;
                    &lt;ID&gt;{3dc82b35-6ec0-45ab-9702-c04499d5a147}&lt;/ID&gt;
                    &lt;Value&gt;MyFile&lt;/Value&gt;
                &lt;/Parameter&gt;
                &lt;/Data&gt;
            </d:Parameters>
            <d:RunbookId m:type="Edm.Guid">71fd19ae-f0fb-499a-8a0b-d66a0e120921</d:RunbookId>
        </m:properties>
    </content>
</entry>

From the POST, the web service sends a response which you need to parse for these lines (specifically the guids):
<d:Id m:type="Edm.Guid">59d84f93-f504-4271-ae11-0a26eedb478c</d:Id>
<d:RunbookId m:type="Edm.Guid">71fd19ae-f0fb-499a-8a0b-d66a0e120921</d:RunbookId>

We need these guids for the first GET call.  This returns the runbook instance id.
url:
https://scorch.domain:8443/Orchestrator2012/Orchestrator.svc/RunbookInstances()?`$filter=RunbookId eq guid'71fd19ae-f0fb-499a-8a0b-d66a0e120921' and JobId eq guid'59d84f93-f504-4271-ae11-0a26eedb478c'&`$select=Id


The response would be parsed to find the guid in this line:
<d:Id m:type="Edm.Guid">c3cf1a99-ac0b-4505-b876-44ae8af9a9d3</d:Id>

The final GET call returns the activity instance data to find the results of the returned data from the child runbook.
https://scorch.domain:8443/Orchestrator2012/Orchestrator.svc/ActivityInstances()?`$expand=Data&`$filter=RunbookInstanceId eq guid'c3cf1a99-ac0b-4505-b876-44ae8af9a9d3'&`$select=Data/Name,Data/Value

This gives a response which we would parse for these lines

<d:Name>Success</d:Name>

<d:Value>true</d:Value>

The value would show whether or not the SCOrch workflow succeeded or failed.