What is Orchestration?
Orchestration is the ability to integrate, coordinate, and manage diverse systems and applications. The goal of orchestration is to streamline and optimize frequent, repeatable processes in order to ensure accurate, speedier delivery of services.
What are some common use cases for orchestration on the service desk?
User Provisioning / Deprovisioning
Assigning/Modifying/Revoking User licenses
Provisioning/Deprovisioning Virtual Machines on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
Email List Management - Adding users to a distribution group
Password Resets
Actions in Collaboration tools such as Slack and MS Teams
3. What are Orchestration Apps?
We’ve abstracted all the scripting associated with the actions, into a special category of apps called Orchestration Apps that you can invoke within Freshservice’s easy to use Graphical Workflow Automator.
What are App Nodes in the Workflow Automator?
The Workflow Automator already has nodes such as Event, Condition, Action. The App Node is another such node. It allows you to invoke the actions encapsulated in the Orchestration Apps.
How do I install the Orchestration apps?
You can install the Orchestration Apps from the following places:
Marketplace Gallery
Workflow Automator
Orchestration Center Admin Page
Is there a price associated with installing these apps?
All Orchestration Apps published by Freshservice will remain free to install.
How is the Orchestration Center priced?
The Orchestration Center follows a transaction-based pricing model. Any action taken via the app node in a workflow counts as 1 transaction.
In the illustration below, a successful completion of this Sample Onboarding request will require 4 transactions. Hint: Count the number of app nodes on the success path to determine the transactions required.
Which plans is the Orchestration Center available on?
The Orchestration Center is available on all plans. However, the number of free transactions bundled with each plan varies from plan to plan as shown below:-
Starter: 1000 transactions/month
Growth: 2000 transactions/month
Pro: 5000 transactions/month
Enterprise: 20000 transactions/month
Can I buy additional transactions?
Yes. Additional transaction packs can be purchased too. Each pack will contain 1000 transactions and will be priced at $250 per pack.
What is the validity of these transactions?
All transactions are valid until the end of the billing cycle. To illustrate with an example: If you are billed Annually and on the Enterprise plan, you will get 20,000 transactions/month * 12 months = 240,000 transactions at the start of your billing cycle.
11. How do I see how many transactions I've utilized at any given point of time?
You can view your transaction consumption details from the Plans and Billing page.
12. What is the validity of these transactions?
All transactions are valid until the end of the billing cycle. To illustrate with an example: If you are billed Annually and on the Enterprise plan, you will get 20,000 transactions/month * 12 months = 240,000 transactions at the start of your billing cycle.
13. What’s the best way to design my workflow and test it without incurring a transaction loss?
We understand that designing your workflows and processes require a bit of trial and error. That’s why we provide the ability to Test an App action within the App node. Use the test app action to understand how each action behaves under various scenarios.
Alternatively, if you are on the enterprise plan, you can use your Sandbox account to test our actions without incurring a transaction loss.
14. What do Execution Logs do?
The Execution logs in a workflow are used to debug and audit any and all app actions that were executed as part of a workflow. These are useful especially to debug errors in a workflow. Please note that entries in these logs will expire in 30 days
15. What do the different Transaction statuses in execution logs indicate?
An App action(transaction) can take one of the 3 statuses
Success: This means the app action was successful for example: Successfully Creating a User in Azure AD.
Completed with Errors: This means that the request is complete but some errors were returned from the 3rd party, for example: If an invalid email format is given when Creating a User in Azure AD.
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Failed: The action failed due to the Orchestration platform. This could mean a failure from the Workflow Automator or the Marketplace service.
Also if any of the mandatory payload inputs’ placeholder values are empty when the workflow runs the transaction will be set to the Failed status.
16. Are all transaction statuses metered/chargeable?
Only transactions that are either Success or Completed with Errors are metered and thus chargeable. Failed transactions are not counted.
17. Can I report on the Orchestration transactions over a period of time?
Certainly. We have a curated report in Analytics called Orchestration Metrics that will help you get started. You can also create your own reports too.
18. What happens if I run out of transactions and the workflow executes an App action?
The app action will be logged as a failed transaction and any further execution of the workflow will be aborted.
Note: Notification will be sent out if the account has used 50%, 80%, 90%, or 100% of transaction
19. What safeguards are in place to let me know that my transactions are running out?
The Orchestration center will send out email notifications and put up in-product banners at 50,80,90% thresholds and once all transactions have been exhausted.
