Workflow that Triggers on Relationship Add or Remove

It’s easy to create workflows that trigger on property changes such as when the status of an Incident changes from Active to Resolved.  However, you can’t use the console or Authoring tool to configure workflows that have criteria for relationship changes.

Fortunately with a bit of XML tweaking it is possible to trigger a workflow when a relationship is created or when it is deleted.

This method will work with email subscriptions, console workflows or authored workflows created using the Authoring tool.

In this example I’ve used the Authoring tool to create a workflow that generates an event in the Operations Manager Event Log when the Affected User is set on an Incident.

Regardless of your method it is important to ensure you set some kind of criteria (doesn’t really matter what you choose) as that makes the XML easier to edit.  I’ve used a criteria based on the Affected User Company property.

I’ve then configured the rest of the workflow the way I want it and saved my configuration.

Next I edit the unsealed management pack.  To do this for an email subscription or a console workflow, export the management pack first.

The rest of the configuration will be done by editing the management pack using an XML editor.  The section I want is the subscription which is located in the Rule under the Rules section.

<Subscription>
<WindowsWorkflowConfiguration>
<AssemblyName>DevTestIncidentWorkflows</AssemblyName>
<WorkflowTypeName>WorkflowAuthoring.DevTestIncidentWorkflows</WorkflowTypeName>
<WorkflowParameters></WorkflowParameters>
<RetryExceptions></RetryExceptions>
<RetryDelaySeconds>60</RetryDelaySeconds>
<MaximumRunningTimeSeconds>300</MaximumRunningTimeSeconds>
</WindowsWorkflowConfiguration>
</Subscription>

I can see the conditions in the subscription.  I need to replace the subscription with my relationship subscription in order to set the criteria to be when a relationship is created between an Incident and the Affected User.

<RelationshipSubscription RelType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItemAffectedUser']$" SourceType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItem']$" TargetType="$MPElement[Name='System!System.User']$">
<AddRelationship>
</AddRelationship>
</RelationshipSubscription>

The key difference here is that we are using a RelationshipSubscription.  The relationship is made up of the relationship property, the target and the source.  The properties you need can be found by looking at class properties using the Authoring tool, or by using PowerShell.  For example:

$Class = Get-SCSMClass | where {$_.DisplayName -eq 'Incident'}
$Class.PropertyCollection | format-table DisplayName,Name,Type

Lets break the relationship down.  The first part identifies the relationship.

Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItemAffectedUser'

This tells the workflow to use the System.WorkItemAffectedUser relationship that can be found in the System_WorkItem_Library management pack.  System_WorkItem_Library must match the name of the reference at the beginning of this management pack.  E.G:

<Reference Alias="System_WorkItem_Library">
<ID>System.WorkItem.Library</ID>
<Version>7.5.3079.0</Version>
<PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken>
</Reference>

The second part identifies the source class.

Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItem'

In this case the source class is System.WorkItem.  Hang on… aren’t we supposed to be using the Incident class?  Well, the Incident class is derived from the abstract class Trouble Ticket, which, in turn is derived from the Abstact class Work Item.  This means the relationship from Work Item is also present in Incident.

More information on Abstract classes can be found here.

The third and final part of the relationhip is the target class.

Name='System!System.User'

Again, although we want to use the Active Directory User class, we really want the base class that the relationship is derived from.  This is the User class.

So my new subscription should look like this:

<DataSources>
<DataSource ID="DS" TypeID="SystemCenter1!Microsoft.SystemCenter.CmdbInstanceSubscription.DataSourceModule">
<Subscription>
<RelationshipSubscription RelType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItemAffectedUser']$" SourceType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItem']$" TargetType="$MPElement[Name='System!System.User']$">
<AddRelationship>
</AddRelationship>
</RelationshipSubscription>
<PollingIntervalInSeconds>60</PollingIntervalInSeconds>
<BatchSize>100</BatchSize>
</Subscription>
</DataSource>
</DataSources>

If I wanted the workflow to trigger when the relationship is deleted between an Incident and the Affected User I would use this type of subscription instead:

<DataSources>
<DataSource ID="DS" TypeID="SystemCenter1!Microsoft.SystemCenter.CmdbInstanceSubscription.DataSourceModule">
<Subscription>
<RelationshipSubscription RelType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItemAffectedUser']$" SourceType="$MPElement[Name='System_WorkItem_Library!System.WorkItem']$" TargetType="$MPElement[Name='System!System.User']$">
<DeleteRelationship>
</DeleteRelationship>
</RelationshipSubscription>
<PollingIntervalInSeconds>60</PollingIntervalInSeconds>
<BatchSize>100</BatchSize>
</Subscription>
</DataSource>
</DataSources>