Manager+Agents’ new workflow looping feature = easy iterations + visibility

By Ian Hamilton 

If you’re currently building complex workflows in Manager+Agents, your job just got easier with our latest release. M+A 11.2. has a new workflow looping feature that allows for automated iterations and greater visibility. Here’s how it works.

The new looping construct allows a set of steps in a workflow to be performed for each entry in a list, essentially modeling a “for each” loop. For example, you can repeat the same workflow steps with each entry in a list of agents, files or users. 

Before we added this feature, looping had to be executed using custom components that implemented looping internally or launched a new job via web services to handle each iteration. This approach was sometimes tedious to pull off and sacrificed visibility into the overall job progress.

With the introduction of “iteration groups”, a list of input can be provided to a grouped sequence of steps allowing:

• steps to be executed once for each entry in a list, where each entry is mapped as a single valued input to the workflow steps;
• the iteration group to execute all iterations in parallel, or one after the other in a series;
• use of the existing group construct so subsequent steps can be executed, or errors handled, after all iterations complete in a familiar manner.

Because it’s now easier to iterate over a set of values in a list with a sequence of steps in a workflow, it also far easier to monitor the overall progress of the resulting job.

Creating and managing workflows in broadcast is a complex practice, and some of the smartest companies in the world have requested this particular feature. Please let us know if it makes a difference in your day.