What’s New in the April Release (8.12.0)
With the April 2023 Aria Automation launch, the Aria Automation Consumption Administrator, generally referred to as a Cloud Administrator can now work with more than one custom form for a particular released content instead of being limited only to one custom form prior to this release.
It also allows you to create, restore or delete versions of a particular request custom form for any of the supported catalog contents.
This will allow our customers now to create for example individual Custom Forms for different released versions of an Aria Automation Template, being one of the supported source content types, to accommodate new template changes as it gets updated over time or if you have to restore an older version of the custom form due to any issues found with a new modified custom form.
Each custom form whether its enabled or disabled created for a particular content can have its own number of versions history that can be restored at any time.
Demo Example
Here we have an Open Cart Application template with two released versions, 1 and 2 in Aria Automation Assembler.
Once the template content source is imported and validated in Aria Automation Consumption we should see a representation for the Open Cart Application template as an available content, along with the two released versions under Content & Policies -> Content and once you click the Double Arrows [>>] on the listed content.
Please note that the ellipsis on the listed content now only includes the Configure Item action, which still allows you to set things like the Max. instances per request and/or changing the display Icon for the content.
Enhancement No.1
Now for each released version listed there is an independent ellipsis that allow you to either create a new custom form from scratch by clicking Customize Form or by clicking New Form From to create a new custom form from an existing custom form if one was already created within Aria Automation Consumption for the same content or any other content for that matter, so it can be used as a good starting point .
This is the first enhancement that we want to highlight here since now you can create multiple custom forms for a content by creating an individual custom form for each released version.
Lets go ahead and create a new custom form for our content by clicking the ellipsis first then clicking on Customize Form on version 1 of the content and then enabling the form by clicking ENABLE, using the default generated custom form and then clicking on Create.
Enhancement No. 2
You will notice that in this release you now have the option to create a version of your custom form by clicking VERSION anytime you create a new form or anytime you modify the form its original state to create a newer version of the custom form, similar to VMware Aria Templates and its version history.
Allowing you to have multiple versions for an individual custom form created for a released content.
lets go ahead and create our first custom form version by providing the name (Mandatory), description (Optional) and changelog (Optional).
Since we are creating a custom form for version 1 of the released content “Open Cart Application” , we will type 1 as the name but feel free to name it anything you like and click on CREATE and then click SAVE to save the form.
If we hit CANCEL on the custom form to go back to the content page you will notice if you expand the content again by clicking Double Arrows [>>] that the custom request form status on version 1 is Enabled and if you click the ellipsis, you have the option to load the form again by clicking Customize Form lets say if you want to modify it to create a new version or Delete it altogether by clicking Delete Custom Request Form which will delete the form and its entire version history which will dive into shortly.
We can also repeat the same process and create yet another custom form for version 2 of the content if we wanted to.
Lets click on Customize Form to go back into the custom form to modify it and then create version 1.1 for the new modified form.
Here you see just as an example we have modified the custom form and created two additional tabs VM Details and User Details and moved the related inputs respectively to simplify the user experience during the request.
To save this modified version of the custom form will click on SAVE first then click VERSION to create a new version for it.
lets go ahead and create our 2nd custom form version by providing the name (Mandatory), description (Optional) and changelog (Optional).
Since we are creating a 2nd custom form version for version 1 of the released content “Open Cart Application” and the fact that we already have a custom form version 1 that we created earlier, we will type 1.1 as the name but feel free again to name it anything you like and click on CREATE and then click SAVE to save the new modified form.
Now that we created two different versions of the custom form being “1” and “1.1” for version 1 of the released content “Open Cart Application”, we can click VERSION HISTORY within the custom form to review the version history.
Enhancement No. 4
Once the custom form version history page is loaded up we can see the two versions that we created and the option to RESTORE any particular version as the current active custom form version for the released content version 1 as illustrated below.
Enhancement No. 5
We also have the ability to compare any of the listed versions with other versions within the same custom form including the current active version by selecting the custom form version from the left that we want to compare against and selecting the custom form version we want to compare it to from the drop down Compare to menu on the right.
After that you either click on View tab to see the actual custom form layout for that version or by clicking on the Diff tab to see the differences using a Side by Side or Inline view mode in the form of a YAML definition code.
Summary
Custom forms in Aria Automation Consumption now has version history for all types of content sources (Orchestrator Workflows, Extensibility Actions, AWS CFT, Aria Templates, Aria Pipelines, etc.).
Custom Request Form Author Can:
- Create a specific version of the form in order to be able to use it for a specific content source item.
- Review a list for all versions of a specific custom form.
- Restore to a previous version of the form in order to be able to use it for a specific content source item.
- Create a new version of custom form based off the latest custom form version.
- Attach one custom form for one version of the content source item (only for Templates) and allow multiple versions for that custom form.
Now that you are aware of this new capability within the new release, allowing you to create more than one Custom Request Form for a released content and at the same time allowing you to Save Different Versions of the custom form, let us know how you are planning to use the new functionality to your advantage as you continue to improve your content within your organization or if you have any feedback on the new custom form version history enhancement in this release.
Let us know in the comments and thank you for reading if you made it this far.
Until next time, Happy Request Forms!
For more info or questions on this, reach out to Maher on Twitter
