Using The Comparison UtilityLast Updated: 07/25/2016 Introduced in Verision: 2.0 |
This tutorial shows how to use Comparison Utility in Decisions. Comparison Utility was implemented for Administrative purposes. It can be used to compare Flows and Rules. There are two options in this Utility: Compare to History or Compare to Flow/Rule. The results that are produced with this Utility should be analyzed in order to check what is the difference between two Flows/Rules or what changes have been done to the Flow/Rule.
Example:
First, we need to create a Flow. We begin in a Designer Folder with clicking Create Flow button from Folder Actions panel.
Next, we name the Flow and click Create to proceed to the Flow Designer.
In the Flow Designer we add Show Popup step from Favorite Steps category in the Flow Designer Wizard.
In the resulting window we configure Subject and Message for this Popup step and click Add when finished.
Next, we can use Flow Designer Wizard to Connect Show Popup step to the [End Step] by expanding Steps In This Flow category.
This completes our Flow. We can save the Flow and close the Flow Designer.
Next, we can do some changes to the Flow. We click Edit Flow from the Thumbnail Action menu.
We add another Show Popup step next to the first Show Popup step in our Flow.
Then, we configure this Show Popup step similarly to the first one.
When finished, we can connect the steps in our Flow in the following manner. Next, we can save the changes to our Flow and close Flow Designer.
Back in the Designer Folder we locate our Flow Thumbnail and from its Action menu select Compare > Compare To History option.
In the resulting Comparison window from the Pick Flow dropdown we pick Original Flow…
Now, we should be able to observe and analyze data in the Results window… In this example we can see the names of source and target Flows. In addition, we can see all differences between the Flows: the rows that start from [—-diff—-] indicator reflect these differences. Next, we can see how connections between the two versions of our Flow change. [————] StepConnections section reflects this information. We can see that a couple new connections appeared in the source Flow because we have added a new Step. Additionally, in the Source Flow there is no connection between first Show Popup step and the End Step. This is reflected in the last row in this section. Finally, the last section [————] Steps reflects that we have added a new Show Popup step.
We can click Ok to close this Comparison Utility.
Back in the Designer Folder we are going to create another Flow for Comparison. We click Create Flow. Then, name the Flow and click Create to proceed to the Flow Designer.
This Flow has only one Show Popup step. Additionally, we have created a Service for this Flow…
We can save the Flow when we finished designing it, and close the Flow Designer… In the Designer Folder we locate a Thumbnail for our first Flow. This time we select Compare > Compare To Flow option from its Action menu.
In the Comparison window we use a Flow Picker to select our second Flow we have just created in this tutorial.
Again, we are able to analyze the differences between these two Flows… From the [————] Flow section it is obvious that our Flows have different GeneratedServiceMethodNames, Ids, Names, and there was a Service Generated for one of them. Next in [————] StepConnections section we can see that one Flow has 3 connections and other Flow has only 2 connections. Finally, last section [————] Steps tells us what steps each of the Flows were designed with. We click Ok to close this Comparison Utility.
Rules:
Comparison Utility can be applied to the Rules as well.
To demonstrate this, we create a simple Rule like the following…
In the Designer Folder we locate a Thumbnail for our Rule and select Compare > Compare to History option from its Action menu.
Just like we did for the Flow Comparison, we select Original Rule in the Rule Picker dropdown. Next, we should be able to see the Results of Comparison… First, we can see our source and our target. Next, under [————] Rule section we can see all differences reflected in the rows with [—-diff—-] indicator. Here we can tell that two versions of the Rule reside in different Folders (Original Rule is moved to the History Folder automatically by the SYSTEM). Because these two versions of the same Rule are basically two different Rules for the SYSTEM, they have different Id, Name, and GeneratedServiceMethodName. When we finished analyzing we can click Ok to close Comparison Utility.
In the Designer Folder we create another Rule, so we can use Comparison Utility to compare two different Rules. Second Rule is designed as following…
In the Designer Folder we locate our First Rule and select Compare > Compare to Rule option from its Action menu.
In the Comparison Window we use Rule Picker to pick Second Rule that we have just created.
Now, we can analyze the Comparison Results…
