Cloudaware Applications - Auto-Attachment Rules

CloudAware Applications support auto-attachment processes that enable automatic attachment of objects to Cloudaware applications and improve asset management.

Description

Cloudaware Application auto-attachment rules are based on Salesforce Flow functionality.

Flows are a powerful declarative tool used for process automation. Cloudaware application attachment flows update the Application Tier Client Name field on an attachable resource (AWS EC2, RDS, Azure VM, etc.).

The value of the Application Tier Client Name then determines which Cloudaware Application and Application Tier a resource will be attached to. It uses the following format'<Cloudaware_Application_Name> - <Application_Tier'.

Prerequisites

Cloudaware Application(s) created with 1 or more Application Tiers: https://docs.cloudaware.com/DOCS/create-virtual-applications

Creating an Auto-Attachment Flow

From your Cloudaware account open a main menu under your username.

2. Go to Setup → Process Automation → Flows → New Flow.

3. Choose the Record-Triggered Flow option for your new flow, and click Create.

4. Select an Object you would like to set up an attachment rule for and set the trigger to 'A record is created or updated'.

5. Specify an entry condition. In this case, we will be creating attachment logic based on 'Application' and 'Environment' AWS tags values. Both fields should NOT be equal to an empty string.

6. Keep the 'Every time a record is updated and meets the condition requirements' option selected.

7. We are going to optimize the flow for Fast Field Updates. Click Done after setting this option.

8. Before specifying flow actions, we need to create a formula resource to get values from Application Tag and Environment Tag values. Open the ToolBox in the top left and click New Resource

9. Choose Formula resource type, specify the API name for it and choose ‘Text’ as the Data Type.

The formula should be formatted in the following way: {!$Record.<Application_Tag>} & " - " & {!$Record.<Environment_Tag>}.

10. Now we can configure the action that will be performing the actual Application Tier Client Name field update on a triggered object record. Choose Update Triggering Record in the shortcuts menu.

11. Set a label for the new element, and keep the 'Use the aws ec2 instance record that triggered the flow' option selected. In the Set Field Values for the Record specify the Application Tier Client Name as the field and ApplicationTierClientNameFormula as the value . Click Done.

12. After saving the flow the Activate button will become available. Click Activate.

Now the background process will be automatically matching the Application Client Tier Name values for triggered records with existing Cloudaware Applications and Application Tiers and perform the attachment.

Objects triggered by the flow and also their related objects (such as Network Interfaces and EBS Volumes for EC2) will be automatically attached to the appropriate application within 24 hours.

Attachment Logic Examples

if Name starts with prod, set Tier Name to "The Application - The Tier"
if tag:Customer equals CustomerA, set Tier Name to "The Customer App - The Tier"
if tag:Application is not empty and tag:Tier is not empty, set Tier Name to tag:Application+" - "+tag:Tier

Customers can create even more complicated auto-attachment rules configuring formula resources/fields inside flows or even update them via API from an external system. Almost any complex object classification logic is possible using flows and formulas.

Object Re-Attachment After Application Tier Client Name Change

If the Application Tier Client Name is changed, objects will be re-attached in 1 hour. However, delays are possible if a customer doesn't log in to their Cloudaware account for some time.