State Machines

Existing State machines

The State Machine section allows the user to manage the different State Machines created in your account. In this section, you can create, view details, edit, or delete state machines.

Find State Machines

There 3 ways to ease the search of a state machine

1. You can use the search bar to find state machines. You can find a state machine either by name (or part of it).

2. You can use the dropdown list next to the search bar to select one or several of the following options

   1. ‘Show machines with an execution running’

   2. ‘Show machies with last execution succeeded’

   3. ‘Show machies with last execution failed’

   4. ‘Show machies with last execution aborted’

3. You can filter to see only your state machines set up as favorite

Set/Unset a State Machine as (un)favorite

States allows you to set state machines as “favorite” to make them appear easily through a filter.

You will just have to click on the blue “star” button on the left of a state machine’s name in the list view:

Once selected, the star will appear in gold in the list.

To remove the state machine among the favorites, simply “unstar” the state machine (either in the list view, either in the card).

Setting a state machine as a favorite is user-based. Your choice will not impact other user’s settings.

Create a State Machine

To create a new state machine, click on the “Create State Machine” button

A tab will appear in which you will be asked to enter the following information:

• Name (mandatory and unique)

• Code of the state machine using the Amazon State Language

• The default input that will be used when lauching the state machine

While writing the code, you will see a live visualization of the workflow on the right, which appears when the code is properly written.

This workflow will help you visualize the different tasks in your code.

To save, confirm by clicking on “Save changes” above the code section.

To cancel the creation, click on ‘Cancel changes’ or close the tab. 

Open and edit a state machine

To open a state machine, click on the button ‘Open’ at the end of the row of the state machine

The tab of the state machine will appear displaying 3 sections

• State machine configuration

• Executions

• Tags

State machine configuration

In this tab, you can see and edit the details of the state machine configuration

• The code of the state machine

• The default input

Additionnally, you may also set up a schedule for your state machine by clicking on the button ‘Schedule’ below the graph of the state machine.

A pop-up will appear in which you can

• Select a timezone

• Enter an input that will be used for every scheduled execution of the state machine

• Define if the schedule execution can be launched if there is already another execution running for the same state machine

• Define the frequency of the execution either through a selector or by entering it using the CRON format (in the tab ‘Advanced’)

As explained in the Settings section, States support RSS feeds to notify you about all the state machine’s activities.

To copy the RSS link to the clipboard, you will first need to enable the RSS in your profile settings. Then click on the button ‘Copy RSS Link’ that appears next to the state machine name if the RSS feeds are activated.

The link will be automatically copied to your clipboard with a notification stating so.

You will then only need to copy the link in your RSS editor

Tags

In this tab, you can manage tags on your state machine. Each tag is defined by a key and a value.

Through this feature, you can

• search them by filling the search bar above the list.

• create them by clicking on the button ‘Create a tag’. It opens a pop up in which you will be asked the key (name) and the value of the tag

• edit the existing one by clicking on the ‘pencil’ blue button in the row of the tag. Please note that only the value of the tag can be edited

• delete a tag by clicking on the red ‘trash can’ button

Execution

Once a state Machine has been launched, you can view all executions launched in the State Machine and if they have succeeded.

The status can be:

1. “Running” which means that your execution is still running. If the status does not evolve, you may want to check the execution in detail to identify which state is blocking. Indeed, there is a possibility that one of the states requires an additional input, so it will not produce any output as long as the state has not received this input. It may also indicate that there is no worker available able to manage the blocking state.

2. “Succeeded”, which means that your State Machine has correctly and fully been executed.

3. “Failed” which means that the execution failed for some reason (Task, Timeout)

4. “Aborted” which means that the execution was manually stopped

For each execution on the left panel, you can see

• Its status

• Its run time

• Its start date

By clicking on the execution, you will make appear the complete details of the execution.

Step Details of an Execution in a State Machine

You can either:

1. View the input, the definition, the output and result from a selected step of the state machine by clicking on the desired step in the workflow diagram

 The states color indicates their status.

• Green : success

• Grey : failure

• Light Blue : Waiting to run

• Blue: Running

2. Relaunch an execution by clicking on the button 'Start a new execution”

   1. Please know that, if the execution is still running, the button will not be available. However, a button to stop the execution will be available instead. It will allow you to abort the execution

Execute a state machine

You can start a state machine execution in several ways:

• Click Execute in the row of a state machine on the main State machines page.

• Click Execute in the configuration tab of a state machine.

• Click Start a new execution in the details of an existing execution.

• Select multiple state machines and execute them at the same time.

Execute multiple state machines

To execute multiple state machines at once:

1. Open the main State machines page.

2. Select the state machines that you want to execute by checking the box at the beginning of each row.

3. Click Execute selected state machines.

4. Configure the execution.

5. Click Execute selected state machines to start the selected state machines.

The execution dialog displays the number of selected state machines and provides the following options.

Execution name

The Execution name is optional. It can help you identify this batch of executions later.

The name is automatically suffixed with a timestamp.

Input configuration

You can choose how the input is provided to the selected state machines.

Default input

Select Default input to execute each state machine with its own default input.

This option uses the default input configured for each state machine individually.

Shared input for all executions

Select Shared input for all executions to provide the same input to every selected state machine.

Enter the input in JSON format in the editor.

Note: When using a shared input, the same JSON input is sent to every selected state machine. Make sure that the input is compatible with all the selected state machines.

Click Cancel to close the dialog without starting the executions.

Execution start report

After you click Execute selected state machines, beVault displays a report containing:

• The number of state machines that started successfully.

• The number of state machines that failed to start.

Important: This report only indicates whether beVault successfully started each state machine execution. It does not represent the final status of the executions. A state machine that started successfully may still fail later during its execution.

To check the actual execution status, open the relevant state machine and review its executions. The execution status can be Running, Succeeded, Failed, or Aborted.

Delete a state machine

In order to delete a state machine, you need to reach the main page of the “State machines” module. There, you may

• either delete it individually by clicking on the trashcan button at the end of the row of the state machine

• or delete several ones simultaneously, by checking first the box at the beginning of the row of the state machines you want to delete and then clicking on the button ‘Delete selected state machine’