Okta Workflows: Need a frontend? Use Connectors!

1. Okta Workflows

Without Okta Workflows tasks and processes in Okta had to be handled manually. Delays and inconsistencies due to the human factor would be a consequence.

Not built-in human interaction features

What Okta Workflows in its core is not on the other hand, is a so-called human-interaction workflow engine. With the word “workflow” sometimes the misconception comes along that Okta Workflows is not only for automation, but also for scenarios that some workflow engines designed for that purpose, like ServiceNow, bring along out of the box.

For example, approval workflows or enrichment by human interaction, like a user creation workflow that requires a person to fill in certain fields before the account can be created.

Using the customers' frontend for the automation

However, Okta Workflows might not have human interaction features built in its core, that does not mean that it is not designed to fulfill these requirements as well.

The difference here is that Okta Workflows is designed to use whatever the Okta customer already has within its organization as the frontend for the automation. For that, Okta has pre-configured a wide range of connectors that allow you to easily interact with a frontend, while building the automation with Okta Workflows.

Classic service desk tools, like Jira, Zendesk or ServiceNow, but also standard collaboration tools can be used like Slack, Office 365 Email or Gmail.

2. Service management connectors

Service management tools like ServiceNow, Jira Service Desk or Zendesk always work in some form of tickets, incidents, or other mechanisms. An item is created and maintained for each service request, and will be resolved or closed once that request has been fulfilled.

The Okta connectors for service management tools always offer event cards to capture creation and changes to those items. With that, an Okta Workflow can be triggered based on changes in the tool, without any configuration or customization there.¹

Figure 1 - Example: Jira Service Desk event cards

The options for action cards vary a bit based on how the endpoint manages those tickets and how the usual flow is defined. However, like for the event cards, there is always an option to create and update a ticket/incident. Some additional cards may be present, like “closing”, if that is a different API call in the tool.

The full connector documentation with all available cards can be found in the Okta documentation.

IT Service Manamament (ITSM) tools often have their own options to set and trigger outside API endpoints. This article only describes the options that are available with Okta and the least effort required in the tools. Depending on the use case and environment it might also be a useful option to have the Okta Workflow configured with an API event trigger and call the API endpoint from the ITSM tool.

¹ Apart from the setup of the connection to the endpoint. Usually, there is only a user with sufficient permissions required.