Understanding Integration Cloud and how to get the most out of your implementation

Tag: 16.4.5

Using iCal in Scheduling – ICS Definitive Tip #3

In ICS Definitive Guide #2 we looked at the scheduling of integrations and mentioned the possibility of using iCal. In this tip we shall explore advanced iCal facility for defining schedules within ICS.

icalThe iCal format is probably best known for sharing meeting events in tools such as outlook. The format is actually a standard defined by the IETF originally in 1998 (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt)  and updated several times the latest being IETF Logo - owner of iCal std 2015 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7529). The goal of the definition has been for the purpose of driving standardisation across PIM tools (Personal Information Management) tools which includes Outlook and Thunderbird etc. It is a substantial standard the original document ran to 150 pages, but the section supported by the schweduler’s advanced option purely relates to the reoccurence definition covered by section 4.3.10 of the original RFC, and only takes five pages. If you want to know lots about iCal and the varying revisions then you may find https://icalendar.org/ helpful.

It is worth mentioning that today ICS under the hood exploits Oracle’s Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS). ESS documentation identifies that it works to the 2445 version of the specification (see here). ESS became a 1st class citizen component with the start of the 12c middleware product stack. As a result, if you see any errors processing an iCal configuration the error codes will reference ESS does.

Designer Content Filters – ICS Definitive Tip #1

Definitive Tips, like our Definitive Guide posts address features could not be incorporated into the book, either simply because the feature is new or simply down to the fact the new feature arrived since the book has been published. Unlike the Definitive Guide entries, the tips will always remain very short. The first tip will address content filters in the designer.

Designer Content Filters

Release 16.4.5 introduced a new filter feature to help improve the location of Integrations, Connections and other designer elements. If you visit the Integrations  parts of the designer for example, you will now see  additional options included in the banner as highlighted in the following screenshot:

Scheduling Orchestration Integrations – ICS Definitive Guide #2

This is the second article in the Definitive Guide series. This time we take a look at the ability to Schedule an Orchestration integration within ICS has arrived with release 16.4.5 release of ICS,   To demonstrate this, we are going to reuse our FlightSitRep endpoint from the book’s Chapter 3. If you have not got the book yet – it’s a WSDL one way integration that is connected to Mockable.io.

Creating Scheduled Orchestration

From the Integrations screen we need to click on the New Integration button, and select the Orchestration pattern in the pop-up dialogue. The first thing we will see when creating an integration is the Create New Integration dialog, as shown here:

create new orchestration wizard

As you can see the dialog has a new toggle option which defaults to represent the common approach to Orchestration, that being event triggered through an event or object defined by a connection.

For Each activity for processing batches – ICS Definitive Guide #1

This is the first blog in our ICS Definitive Guide series. In this series we pick one feature that ICS offers and write the most detailed guide on it. This blog introduces the capability of processing batches using the For Each activity in orchestration type integrations.

These blogs follow the same writing style as the book. We sometimes use the same resources as we used in the book, which can be downloaded from the website of Packt. For this blog we are using the same WSDL as we used in chapter 5, Going Social with Twitter and Google, and as in chapter 10, Advanced orchestration with branching and asynchronous flows, but with a little change to one element.

The integration we are going to build simulates a notification send from our Airport Flight Schedules system with a list of persons that are missing / late for their flight. For each flight a list of persons are included in the notification. For each missing person a task is added to a Trello Board, used by the ground personal, to remove the passengers luggage from airplane.

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