Cisco Networking Cloud ‒ Workflows Data Sheet
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Cisco Workflows automates manual and time-consuming tasks across Cisco and third-party applications through a simple, drag-and-drop user interface natively located within the Cisco Networking Cloud.
Cisco® Workflows is a cloud-hosted automation application that is part of the larger Cisco Networking Cloud vision. Workflows provides an entitlement to cross-domain automation capabilities to current Cisco customers by streamlining repetitive and
error-prone tasks across both Cisco and third-party applications through custom and premade automation templates and a plethora of adapter options, both provided by Cisco and build your own, to reach targets in the cloud or on-premises. Cisco Workflows also integrates with role-based access control systems to enable stringent approval processes to help ensure that the right people are building and executing automation runs based on the permission hierarchy of the business.
The purpose of Cisco Workflows is to help IT practitioners simplify their operations with validated and templated automation runs for common scenarios that might otherwise be time-consuming and difficult to manage. Customers can choose from premade templates built on Cisco Validated Designs or create modified and fully custom templates to fit the exact needs of their business. The realized benefits of network automation with Cisco Workflows include fewer errors, reduced time to value, and additional time to focus on revenue-generating projects.
Table 1. Features and benefits
| Feature |
Benefit |
| Cross-platform navigation |
Bounce between Cisco applications from a central location with Single Sign-On (SSO) support. |
| SaaS platform with Identity and Access Management (IAM) and SSO support (US and EU) |
Continuous delivery, multitenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform with SSO support, implemented as a freemium model with premium features. |
| Freemium model |
Out-of-the-box Automation Hub offerings that are free to use for Cisco customers, along with general automation capabilities. |
| Tiered multitenancy |
Manage your organization’s account in a way that’s reflective of the internal structure by leveraging a parent tenant with any number of subtenants beneath. |
| Automation Hub offerings |
Cisco validated offerings published to all users, providing quicker time to value. These are version controlled and frequently updated. |
| Dashboards and dynamic widgets |
Customizable dashboard with widgets so your landing page can be tailored to suit your role and everyone's job functions. |
| Workspace for collaboration and management |
Customer-specific area that allows for marketplace offerings to be customized, lifecycled, and governed by users in a collaborative manner. |
| Workflow and user action designer |
A modern low/no-code workflow designer so users can easily create workflows by dragging and dropping actions onto the canvas from the palette. Enables customizable form creation supported by a WYSIWYG builder, allowing users to design stop points within workflows when human input is required. |
| Interactive workflows |
A user-friendly interface for interacting with user actions, with a rendered form indicating what a user must do before the workflow proceeds. |
| Workflow run monitoring |
Visibility into active workflows, what data inputs were provided, Gantt chart timeline view, status, and step duration. |
| Target management |
Onboard, manage, and monitor controllers and systems to connect and use their API support via the adapter actions available in the palette. |
| Publishing workflows to a catalog |
Apply lifecycle management and governance to workflows so they can be published as approved within a catalog. |
| System and user audit logging |
Robust and detailed audit logging to track system events, user access, and their actions performed in the user interface or via APIs. |
| Secure connectivity to customer-managed devices |
Secure, bidirectional mechanism to communicate with controllers and systems on a customer’s premises or in their private cloud. |
| Cisco API-first guidelines, northbound APIs |
Well-defined, productized, and backward-compatible APIs that adhere to the Cisco API-first best practices and guidelines. |
Cisco provides prebuilt automation templates based on multiple Cisco Validated Design frameworks. These prebuilt templates are ready to implement once a Cisco Workflows account is created and configured. Customers can choose from a catalog of globally published templates that are continuously updated and released. From data center to access interconnect or branch bring-up with SD-WAN, the options for templated automation provided by Cisco are continually growing.
Modified and custom automation
Users have the option to take an automation template provided by Cisco and modify it within the automation designer to fit the needs of their specific use case. This could mean adding additional steps to the workflow run or restructuring the order of events with additional changes. Templates are selected from the catalog and then added to the workspace, where they can easily be modified.
For a completely custom use case, users can build automation templates from scratch. Our low-code workflow designer supports JavaScript and YAML to allow practitioners to add granular automation runs to their environment with connections to any third-party target. Cisco Workflows supports a mixed environment where premade, modified, and custom automations can be built, executed, and immediately observed.
Adapter support
Cisco Workflows offers robust automation and orchestration capabilities through seamless integration with the Cisco portfolio and third-party systems using adapter technology. An adapter encompasses a suite of functionalities that facilitate the execution of API requests against remote targets accessible from the system. Adapters support tasks, which are defined as sequences of API requests designed to produce specific outcomes within a workflow.
A fundamental component of the supported adapters is the connectivity framework, enabling the templating of properties to accommodate target parameters (e.g., username, password, IP address). If a specific adapter is unavailable in the system, users have the flexibility to create tasks using the generic HTTP API request method and leverage defined properties for subsequent API interactions or as task output values.
At launch of Cisco Workflows, the following adapters will be supported, with more coming frequently:
● Cisco ACI®
● Cisco Catalyst™ Center
● Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
● Cisco Identity Services Engine
● Cisco MDS switch
● Cisco Meraki®
● Cisco Nexus switch
● Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
● Infoblox
● ServiceNow
● Generic REST adapter
● Ansible playbook
● Powershell commands
● SSH commands
Information about Cisco’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives and performance is provided in Cisco’s CSR and sustainability reporting.
Table 2. Cisco Environmental Sustainability Information
| Reference |
||
| General |
Information on product-material-content laws and regulations |
|
| Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including our products, batteries and packaging |
||
| Information on product takeback and reuse program |
||
| Sustainability Inquiries |
Contact: csr_inquiries@cisco.com |
|
| Material |
Product packaging weight and materials |
Contact: environment@cisco.com |
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