Introduction / Overview of the Quarterly Update
Introducing new and expanded APIs for Calendar Integration and Processes in Unified Story! In this blog post, I’ll be giving you a look at the new APIs that SAC has introduced to greatly improve the user experience around creating processes and handing calendar/planning events. Have you wanted an easier way to allow users to manage calendar processes? Do you want a way to better integrate calendar tasks/processes into existing stories and applications? This update is meant to do just that. Previously, the only APIs that existed to integrate calendars into stories/applications were relevant to individual tasks – now it is possible to create and manage full processes through scripting in your stories or applications.
Before this update, you would need to navigate away from your data/stories/planning to the separate Calendar in SAC and create processes from there – now you can create a way to manage all of this directly in a story. This reduces the navigation required and can be a more user-friendly experience. To help get you started, I’ll walk you through the new APIs and explain how they can be used to enhance your use of calendar processes via stories.
Plan Process Management – extended APIs for Stories and Analytical Applications
Four additional APIs have been added to the Calendar Integration component of stories/applications. These 4 new APIs are:
- createProcess: This API allows you to create an entire process with relevant properties and then add all relevant information beyond that. To create a process, at a bare minimum, the Name (string format), Start Date (date format), and End Date (date format) are required. You can either create these dates via the script or pull them from any other object/input from within your story. Once created, you can use multiple different APIs such as “addAssignee”, “activate”, “get” information, and “set” different properties – plus many more!
- getCalendarEventById: This API allows you to retrieve an existing event/process based on a specific ID. Keep in mind, the “ID” is not the same as the name and is a unique string similar to a story or model ID. Once you’re retrieved an existing event by the ID, it opens up the possibility to similar commands as the “createProcess” above – you can “activate”, “add”, “get”, “remove”, “set”, etc.
- getCurrentEvent: This API returns the event with which the analytic application or story was started. This will allow you to get the ID of the event most relevant to your story/application which you can then either reference or, as with the above APIs, edit/adjust the existing event.
- getRelatedEventIds: This API returns an array of IDs of any events where the analytic application or story is a work file. Beyond returning the array of IDs, there are no additional commands for this API.
One of the main benefits of these additional APIs is that you can use the commands to automate some of the fields that ordinarily always need filled in manually in the calendar. For example, a single action in a story/application could now “Activate” an entire process (if desired). Additionally, rather than always having to choose an “Assignee” for each individual task/process, you could simply set it up to grab it from a single location and always apply. Another option could be to have a user input a number of days past the Start Date to be the End Date (rather than having to calculate/pick a specific end date). Remember, with the addition of these new APIs, you’re not limited to individual tasks – the ability to setup entire processes and dependencies means that you can trigger off all sorts of planning processes through automated actions via your story/application. The possibilities are endless!
