Deploying a Workflow Manager system

Available with Standard or Advanced license.Available with Workflow Manager license.

Once you have built up your Workflow Manager Repository with the workflows, job types, users, and other elements, you'll be ready for your users to start accessing it to create jobs and manage the work they're doing. This topic discusses the things you'll need to think about when starting to deploy Workflow Manager to your users.

Who to grant administrator access to

ArcGIS Workflow Manager consists of two applications that you will use predominantly to interact with your system: ArcGIS Workflow Manager Administrator and ArcGIS Workflow Manager. Access to these two applications is controlled via the ArcGIS Workflow Manager Administrator application. You will need to decide which users will be responsible for defining your job types, workflows, users, steps, and other configuration elements discussed in the Configuring Workflow Manager section of this user guide. Once you have identified these users, you will add them to the list of users under the security folder and grant them Administrator Access by adding them to the Administrator group.

The other users without administrator access will not be able to connect to the repository via the Workflow Manager Administrator. They will only have access to the ArcGIS Workflow Manager application.

Note:

The Administrator group is created by postinstallation, when creating a new Workflow Manager database or upgrading an existing one. For more information on the Administrator group see:Users and Groups

The user that runs the postinstallation and imports a configuration file will automatically be added to the Administrator group and granted administrator access to the repository.

You can also have more than one repository available in the Administrator, but do not enable administrator access in all of them.

The Workflow Manager database connections

For the desktop client machines, at least one Workflow Manager database connection needs to be configured for the applications to open successfully. When Workflow Manager is installed, no connections exist, so this is the first task that should be completed. You have a couple of options for setting these connections up on the client machines that will be accessing the Workflow Manager Repository:

1. Distribute the .jtc file that is created by the postinstallation tool or by creating a new Workflow Manager database connection from the Configuration Manager or ArcCatalog.
2. Provide users with the connection information to the JTX_DATABASES and JTX_LOGIN_INFO tables and allow them to create their own Workflow Manager Database connections from the Configuration Manager or ArcCatalog.

Special note for terminal server deployments

The Workflow Manager API and applications use an environment variable, DEFAULT_JTX_DB, to determine what the default Workflow Manager database connection is. To set the default Workflow Manager database connection for all users at once, add this new variable to the System variables list, setting the value of the variable to match the name of the connection you would like users to use.

Set the default Workflow Manager database for all users by adding the DEFAULT_JTX_DB system level environment variable.

Note:

Setting the System level variable does not prevent users from switching the default Workflow Manager database connection for their login if there is more than one Workflow Manager connection configured on the machine.

Deploy custom development

If you have built any customizations that are used during workflow execution, you will need to distribute those customizations to your Workflow Manager users. The types of customizations available include

• Custom steps
• Custom executables
• Extra job tabs
• Additional application views

For additional information on building these customizations, please refer to the developer kit found in the Workflow Manager installation location.

Windows users

There are three folders in the Workflow Manager installation location that the applications reference: Jobs, Database, and Logs. Starting ArcMap, adding Workflow Manager database connections, or writing logs with an elevated log level will require that current Windows login to be able to write to those folders. You will need to ensure that your users have the necessary privileges to the default location for these folders or change them to a location that the users can access. There is a utility provided for managing these locations—Workflow Manager Advanced Settings.

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