Operation

Operation is a set of pre-defined actions, that can be executed on demand or on object’s state change.

For example, operations can be used to change the state of an entity, change parameters of objects or links, or get data from an entity (parameters, configuration, software version).

Create and delete operations

Operations for objects and links can be created in the Operations section. You can also edit, delete and execute an existing operations.

You can also set default operations for object classes in system configuration window.

All new objects will have operations defined in their classes.

You can also create operations for classes and entities in the REST API.

Executing operations

You can execute operations one of the following ways:

On demand. User can execute an operation using a button in the Operation sections, context menu of an object or a link, or with the Button widget. Users can also user REST requests to execute operations of objects, links, and a request for any entity;
On entity state change.

Execution event and the result of the operation are recorded in the Operations history log with the execution timestamp and the user who executed the operation.

Using variables in operations

You can use provided variables to pass some system information to operations. You can use variables in the topic and message of operations of type MQTT message, and in the body of the script of the operation of type Program/script execution – Script with text.

The following variables can be used in operations:

{{id}} – ID of the object, in which the operation is executed;
{{properties.property_name}} – property value of the object, in which the operation is executed (the name of the property is specified in the variable);
{{jobId}} – ID of the executed operation;

The identifier is unique for each execution, details are in the REST-API documentation.
{{user.id}} – ID of the user, who has executed the operation;
{{user.login}} – login of the user, who has executed the operation.

Ask users to set operation arguments

Before executing an operation, you can ask users to input an argument that will be passed to the operation’s script. To do this, add the {{ask.argument_name}} to the script.

For the operation of "Program/script in file system" and "Script from repository" subtypes, you can only add this macro in the "Arguments" list. For the "Script with text" subtypes, you can add {{ask.argument_name}} macro either to the script’s source text or to the list of arguments.

This functionality works only for "Program / script execution" operations. If you try to use this feature in operations of "MQTT Message" type, the {{ask.argument_name}} macro will be replace by an empty string.

For example, the following operation will ask a user that manually executes it for the values of packets_count and ip_address variables:

#!/bin/bash

ping -c {{ask.packets_count}} {{ask.ip_address}}

When a user executes this operation, the system will prompt them to enter values of the packets_count and ip_address arguments:

You can use this macro in the "Arguments" list as well:

The example above has to be modified to handle arguments from "Arguments" list:

#!/bin/bash

ping -c "$1" "$2"