Azure managed services integration
WorkflowGen integration with Microsoft Azure PaaS
In addition to its modern, cutting-edge integration features such as the GraphQL API and webhooks, WorkflowGen 7.11 now also includes extensive Microsoft Azure integration capabilities. As a powerful, flexible and scalable cloud-based service, Azure allows enterprises to move past the limitations often associated with on-premise IT constraints, with multiple facets and services for all types of business process requirements. Bringing Azure to WorkflowGen — itself a flexible and scalable process automation solution — was thus a natural choice.
WorkflowGen can be fully integrated with the Azure PaaS architecture. WorkflowGen server instances are simply deployed as VMs or Docker containers on top of the Azure-managed services; this architecture will not only make your operations easier but also more cost efficient and highly scalable.
Authentication
Azure Active Directory OpenID Connect authentication provides a more secure, unified single sign-on experience across different web apps and platforms.
OpenID Connect is a simple identity layer built on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. OAuth 2.0 defines mechanisms to obtain and use access tokens to access protected resources, but they do not define standard methods to provide identity information. OpenID Connect implements authentication as an extension to the OAuth 2.0 authorization process. It provides information about the end user in the form of an id_token that verifies the identity of the user and provides basic profile information about the user.
In addition to WorkflowGen authentication, Azure Active Directory OpenID Connect can also be configured for access to the WorkflowGen Plus mobile app, server-side scripts and single-page applications.
User provisioning
Azure Active Directory can be configured to automatically provision users and groups using the SCIM v2 protocol supported by WorkflowGen.
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based directory, and identity management service that combines core directory services, application access management, and identity protection into a single solution. Azure AD also offers a rich, standards-based platform that enables developers to deliver access control to their applications, based on centralized policy and rules.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/active-directory-whatis
With this configuration, Azure Active Directory will automatically update users and groups and periodically push them to WorkflowGen.
SQL Database
Azure SQL support and Azure SQL Read Scale-Out enable load balancing in master/slave database architectures.
The Read Scale-Out feature allows you to load balance SQL Database read-only workloads using the capacity of one of the read-only replicas instead of sharing the read-write replica. This way the read-only workload will be isolated from the main read-write workload and will not affect its performance. The feature is intended for the applications that include logically separated read-only workloads, such as analytics, and therefore could gain performance benefits using this additional capacity at no extra cost.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-read-scale-out
File storage
Azure Files can be used with the SMB protocol when WorkflowGen files need to be shared across multiple server instances (such as web farms with a load balancer).
Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Azure file shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS. Additionally, Azure file shares can be cached on Windows Servers with Azure File Sync for fast access near where the data is being used.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-files-introduction
Notifications
Azure SendGrid for SMTP notifications provides more reliable email notification delivery with a scalable infrastructure, as well as anaytics.
SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP provider that allows you to send email without having to maintain email servers. SendGrid manages all of the technical details, from scaling the infrastructure to ISP outreach and reputation monitoring to whitelist services and real time analytics.
Load balancing
For high avaibility and scalability, WorkflowGen relies on Azure Load Balancer to distribute HTTP requests to multiple WorkflowGen server instances.
Load Balancer distributes new inbound flows that arrive on the load balancer’s frontend to backend pool instances, according to rules and health probes.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-overview
For technical details and instructions on how these Azure services are configured in WorkflowGen, check out the new Azure integration chapter in the WorkflowGen Technical Guide.
And there’s more on the way in future releases: WorkflowGen connectors for Azure Event Grid are expected in Fall 2018, and will provide a seamless and modern integration between your processes and your other applications and systems by using a pub/sub event-based model. Your WorkflowGen processes will be able to publish or consume events managed by Azure Event Grid. This will open up a new era of automation, mixing complex human-centric processes coupled with fully automated cloud-based operations.
