Workflows

Workflows

Workflows are the automation engine — they react to events, run on schedules, and connect Dynatrace to external systems like email, Slack, Jira, and AWS.

Anatomy of a Workflow

Trigger → Task 1 → Task 2 → Task 3
  ↓         ↓         ↓         ↓
What starts  DQL query  Format    Send email
the workflow            results

Trigger Types

Trigger             What Starts It                          Use Case
──────────────────  ──────────────────────────────────────  ──────────────────────────
Davis problem       New or reopened problem                  Alert notifications
Davis event         Any Davis event                         Fine-grained handling
Schedule            Time-based (cron, interval, fixed)      Daily reports, weekly trends
On demand           Manual "Run" button                     Testing, ad-hoc

Available Connectors

Connector                What It Does
───────────────────────  ──────────────────────────────────────
Email                    Send email notifications
Slack                    Send Slack messages
Jira                     Create/update Jira issues
Microsoft Teams          Send Teams messages
ServiceNow               Create incidents
PagerDuty                Trigger pages
AWS                      Lambda, S3, EC2 operations
Kubernetes               Query/manipulate K8s resources
GitHub / GitLab          Create issues, trigger pipelines
HTTP Request             Call any REST API
DQL Query                Run DQL and use results
JavaScript               Custom logic, formatting

Building a Problem Notification Workflow

1. Ctrl+K → "Workflows" → Create new
2. Trigger: Davis problem
3. Add task: Send email
4. Subject: {{ event()["event.name"] }}
5. Body: Problem details with Jinja expressions
6. Save → the workflow fires on every new problem

Jinja Expressions

// Access trigger event data
{{ event()["event.name"] }}
{{ event()["display_id"] }}

// Access previous task results
{{ result("query_task").records[0].hostname }}

// Conditional logic
{% if result("check").value > 90 %}CRITICAL{% else %}OK{% endif %}

Service User Actors

Workflows should run as a service user, not a personal account:

Step  Action
────  ──────────────────────────────────────
1     Create service user (Account Management → IAM)
2     Create policy with required scopes
3     Bind policy to service user's group
4     Set service user as workflow actor

Run JavaScript Action Limits

When using custom JavaScript tasks in workflows, be aware of these hard limits:

Limit                    Value
───────────────────────  ──────────────────────
Execution timeout        120 seconds (NOT extendable)
RAM                      256 MB
Script size              ~5 MB (including context)
Result size              6 MB
Result type              JSON only (no binary)
HTTP calls               Must be on global allowlist