Exchange Users Activities

Article
10/24/2013

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator, System Center 2012 SP1 - Orchestrator

The configuration instructions in this topic apply to all activities in the Exchange Users Integration Pack. Activities include creating, modifying, and managing tasks, appointments, emails, and contact groups. The task-specific configuration instruction topics for all activities include links to this topic.

The procedures in this topic are performed on any activity that has been placed in the runbook window of the Orchestrator Runbook Designer.

Activity Properties

Each activity has a set of required or optional properties that define the configuration of that activity. The configuration defines how the activity performs its actions and how it connects to other activities as applicable. You can view or modify an activity's properties when the activity has been placed in the runbook window.

To view and configure the properties for an activity

Locate the activity in the runbook window and double-click the activity. Alternatively, you can right-click the activity, and then click Properties.
To save your configuration entries, click Finish.

In the activity properties dialog box, several tabs along the left side provide access to general and specific settings for the activity. The number of available tabs for object properties varies according to the activity type.

General Tab

The General tab contains the Name and Description properties for the activity. By default, the Name of the activity is the same as its activity type, and the Description is blank. You can modify these properties to create more descriptive names or to provide detailed descriptions of the actions of the activity.

Properties Tab

The Properties tab contains properties that are specific to the activity. All activities in this integration pack have the Configuration Name property at the top of the Properties or Filters tab. This property is used to specify the connection to the Exchange server.

To configure the Configuration Name property

Click the ellipsis (…) button next to the Name field.
Select the applicable connection name. The connections that are displayed in the list have been previously configured as described in Exchange Users Integration Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator.

Filter Behavior

The Monitor and Get activities use filters to determine the values that will invoke a runbook or retrieve activities. Property values of potential candidates are compared to the values of the filters to determine if they meet the criteria. To specify filtering criteria, you can select one of the available methods of comparison. An option is provided to either match or not match the filter using each method. For example, the "Does not" version of a method finds any message that does not match the filter. All text filters are case sensitive. Here are the available filtering options:

Equals: The property of the message matches the text or number specified in the filter.
Does not equal: The property of the message does not match the text or number specified in the filter.
Is less than: The property of the message is less than the number specified in the filter.
Is less than or equal to: The property of the message is less than or equal to the number specified in the filter.
Is greater than: The property of the message is greater than the number in the filter.
Is greater than or equal to: The property of the message is greater than or equal to the number specified in the filter.
Contains: The property of the message contains the exact text specified in the filter. Unlike the Equals filter behavior, there can be other text surrounding the matching text.
Does not contain: the property of the message does not contain the exact text specified in the filter. Unlike the Equals filter behavior, there can be other text surrounding the matching text.
Starts with pattern: The property of the message starts with the exact text specified in the filter. Unlike the Equals filter behavior, there can be other text following the matching text.

The Run Behavior Tab

The Run Behavior tab contains the properties that determine how the activity handles multi-value published data and also determine what notifications will be sent if the activity fails or runs for an excessive period of time.

Multi-Value Published Data Behavior

The Get activities retrieve information from another activity or outside source, and can return one or more values in the published data. For example, the data output from the Get Item activity could be the details of an existing appointment.

By default, the data from the Get activity will be passed on as multiple individual outputs. The multiple outputs will invoke the next activity as many times as there are items in the output. Alternatively, you can provide a single output for the activity by enabling the Flatten option. When you enable this option, you must choose a formatting option:

Separate with line breaks. Each item is on a new line. This format is useful for creating human-readable text files for the output.
Separate with. Each item is separated by one or more characters of your choice.
Use CSV format. All items are in CSV (comma-separated value) format. This format is useful for importing data into spreadsheets or other applications.

The activity will produce a new set of data every time it runs. The Flatten feature does not flatten data across multiple instances of the same activity.

Event Notifications

Some activities are expected to take a limited amount of time to complete. If they do not complete within that time they may be stalled or there may be another issue preventing them from completing. You can define the number of seconds to wait for completion of the action. After this specified time period, a platform event will be sent and the issue will be reported. You can also choose whether to generate a platform event if the activity returns a failure.

To be notified when the activity takes longer than a specified time to run or fails to run

In the Event Notifications box, enter the number of seconds of run time before a notification is generated.
Select Report if activity fails to run to generate run failure notifications.

Published Data

Published data is the foundation of a working runbook. It is the data produced as a result of the actions of an activity. This data is published to an internal data bus that is unique for each runbook. Subsequent activities in the runbook can subscribe to this data and use it in their configuration. Link conditions also use this information to add decision-making capabilities to runbooks.

An activity can subscribe only to data from the activities that are linked before it in the runbook. You can use published data to automatically populate the property values needed by activities.

To use published data

Right-click the property value box, click Subscribe, and then click Published Data.
Click the Activity drop-down box and select the activity from which you want to obtain the data. To view additional data elements common to all runbooks, select Show Common Published Data.
Click the published data element that you want to use, and then click OK.

For a list of the data elements published by each activity, see the Published Data table in the activity topic. For information about the common published data items, see Common Published Data.

Activities

This integration pack adds the Exchange Users category to the Activity pane in the Runbook Designer. This category contains the following activities:

Create and Send E-Mail

Create Item

Delete Item

Find Appointment

Forward Item

Get Item

Monitor Item

Move or Copy Item

Reply To E-Mail

Send E-Mail

Update Item