Using Automation assets

Automation assets enables you to share integration assets across instances in Cloud Pak for Integration. Assets (such as JSON schemas) that are stored within this repository can be accessed directly from the user interface of certain instances. For example, an OpenAPI specification asset stored in the repository can be directly imported within an API management instance.

After you deploy an instance of Automation assets (as described in Automation assets deployment), you can access it from the Platform UI by clicking it in the list of instances.

To add assets, click the Add Assets button. You then get a prompt to add an asset from your machine. You can also add assets that are located in remote repositories, such as Git. In this way, you can take advantage of the versioning functionality that is offered by the remote repository. Assets that are stored in a remote repository are read-only. For more information, see Remotes.

Automation assets provides fine-grained authorization by using Keycloak. For more information about Keycloak, see Managing users in Keycloak.

Each instance of Automation assets has its own Keycloak client. The Keycloak client is named <instance_name>-<namespace>-ar-keycloak and it defines the roles and permissions needed to authorize the actions on that Automation assets instance.

You can assign specific roles to users on the Access control page. These roles control what actions each user can perform.

Built into the Automation assets is support for viewers corresponding to different file types. Files are automatically opened in their associated viewer when selected from either the scroll view or the assets table.

All nonbinary text files have an option to view the associated text underlying the file. If the asset type does not have additional viewer support, the default text viewer is presented. However, if there is additional viewer support, the text view can be opened by clicking the Code button.

These asset types have additional support:

• Open API - Explore the details of an Open API specification asset stored in the repository. Click any particular call to see further details. Click Code to see the actual code.

  

• JSON Schema - Explore the details of a JSON schema by selecting a particular field. Click Code to see the actual code.

  

• Designer API Implementation and Designer Event Driven Flow - The viewer lets you review the contents of the given asset and it also presents cards presenting either the API or the event connections between different triggers.

  

• PDF - The visualizer lets you to review the contents of a PDF file.

• Image - The image viewer lets you to view image files, provided they are of one of the supported types listed above.

• Avro Schema - The visualizer validates webhook configurations so you can review JSON records for Avro schemas.

• Robotic Process Automation Bot - The visualizer lets you to see the associated contents of the Robotic Process Automation Bot.

• Custom Resource Asset Types - Store and reuse custom resources for CP4I components to streamline configuration and deployment.

The Automation assets can include assets in a remote Git repository. Any Git implementation can be used, as long as it supports one of the following:

• No authorization

• SSH key authorization

Assets stored in a remote repository are read-only.

Click Remotes on the Automation assets. The Remote listing page opens.

To add a new remote repository, click Create Remote. A blank configuration page opens. Complete the fields as needed. The Git URL is automatically tested.

Administrators can mark automation assets as approved. Use this feature to indicate to other users that an asset is approved according to criteria you determine, such as rules from your organization.

Approved assets are marked in the Browse Assets tab with an Approved label or with a checkmark icon in the asset table. You can also filter the assets shown using the Show only approved assets switch.

You can mark assets as approved in the following ways:

• When you add an individual asset. In the Add asset page, upload the asset, then set the Mark as approved switch to On.

• When you create or edit a remote asset repository. In the Create remote or Edit remote page, set the Mark assets synced from this remote as approved switch to On. This switch applies to all assets that you later import from this repository.

• After you add or import an asset. In the Browse Assets tab, find the card for the asset, click the overflow (Options) menu in the card, then click Mark as approved. Alternatively, click the asset in the table to open it, then set the Mark as approved switch to On.

These switches and menu options are disabled if you do not have the assets.admin role.

Automation assets provides an AI-powered recommendations feature using Watson natural language processing (NLP) within Designer to provide recommendations from templates that are stored within Automation assets. You can describe your intent by using English natural language, and Watson Insights is used to recommend up to three matching templates that are the best semantic matches for your utterance.

When the feature is enabled, your Automation assets instance includes an auto-created remote that contains App Connect templates. The remote and templates cannot be deleted; they can only be removed if the feature is disabled.

Learn more about the asset recommendations feature in Designer in the App Connect documentation.

When creating an Automation assets instance, you can enable the Designer AI-powered features. To do so, either set the spec.designerAIFeatures.enabled value to true directly in the Automation assets CR, or select one of the sample "with AI enabled" tiles in Platform UI, as shown:

Learn more about AI features in the App Connect documentation.

After you've created your instance, you can also choose to enable the feature by editing the Automation assets CR to set the spec.designerAIFeatures.enabled value. Use the advanced options to specify the NLP image and the associated replica count and resource defaults.

If you are enabling the AI-powered features in an air-gapped environment, you must update the auto-created remote URL to point to a clone of the App Connect templates Git repository that is hosted on the air-gapped network.

To create or use Automation assets without making asset recommendations available in Designer, ensure that the spec.designerAIFeatures.enabled value is set to false in the Automation assets CR. You can use the OpenShift web console, OpenShift CLI, or Platform UI to make this update.

To prevent the upload of malicious files, only the following file types are supported in Automation assets:

• Any non-binary text file

• Code files: .json, .yaml, .yml, .avsc, .wal

• Text files: .zip, .pdf

• Images: .svg,.png, .jpg, .webp, .bmp, .gif, .avif

To configure the advanced options, log in to the Platform UI. Click Edit on a deployed instance of automation assets, and then click YAML.

Use the following table for reference.

Available options:

To disable runtime checks, add the annotation com.ibm.cp4i/disable-webhook-runtime-checks: true to the Automation assets YAML:

metadata:
  annotations:
    com.ibm.cp4i/disable-webhook-runtime-checks: true

For information on how to create and import templates that other users can use to create instances, see the "Creating a new template from an existing template" section in Using the Platform UI.

For information about known issues, workarounds, and troubleshooting information, see Known Limitations.

• You try to set up the default remote created with the Designer AI feature enabled, and it doesn't work automatically.

  If you are seeing an issue with the IBM App Connect templates remote not working automatically after you have enabled the Designer AI feature, you need to either allow the cluster environment you are using to access github.com or clone the repository (https://github.com/ot4i/app-connect-templates/tree/cp4i-templates) and host it on another git provider that is accessible from the cluster.