Overhaul Batch Change Workflow

Background

The manual review workflow that is currently implemented for Batch Changes is hard to follow across the various states and transitions. The purpose of this effort is to streamline the workflow, and finalize and reshape the states and workflows to be in a better place.

Proposed Workflow

diagram source

@startuml
hide empty description

[*] --> PendingReview : SUBMIT (warnings or scheduled)
[*] --> Processing : SUBMIT (no warnings not scheduled)
[*] --> Scheduled : SUBMIT (no warnings and scheduled)

PendingReview --> PendingReview : APPROVE (warnings)
PendingReview --> Processing : APPROVE (no warnings not scheduled)
PendingReview --> Scheduled : APPROVE (no warnings and scheduled)
PendingReview --> [*] : ABANDON (reject or cancel)

Scheduled --> Scheduled : VALIDATE (no warnings)
Scheduled --> PendingReview : VALIDATE (new warnings)
Scheduled --> Processing : PROCESS (no warnings)
Scheduled --> [*] : ABANDON (reject or cancel)

Processing --> [*] : Done
@enduml

The process starts when the batch change is submitted.

Pending Review

A batch change enters Pending Review only when there are warnings present. These warnings can include missing zones or domains flagged for Manual Review. The only way to advance the batch change is to clear all warnings.

Available Actions

• CANCEL - the requesting user can cancel the request
• REJECT - an authorized approver can reject the request if for some reason it should not be implemented.
• APPROVE - an authorized approver can approve the request. This will clear any line items requiring manual review, as well as re-execute validations to see if the batch change can proceed. If warnings remain (or new warnings are found), the change will remain in PendingReview.

Transitions

• On CANCEL --> goto a Cancelled state, capturing the user cancelling the request and the cancellation time.
• On REJECT --> goto a Rejected state, capturing the user rejecting the request, an optional rejection reason.
• On APPROVE
  • if warnings exist --> stay in a PendingReview state until the warnings are addressed
  • if no warnings and scheduled --> goto a Scheduled state until the scheduled datetime has elapsed
  • if no warnings and not scheduled --> goto Processing state for exercising the batch change

Scheduled

A batch change enters a Scheduled state only when there are no errors or warnings and a scheduled datetime has been set on the batch change.

Actions

• PROCESS - can be triggered automatically when the scheduled datetime elapses or manually triggered via an endpoint to process the scheduled change. Note: when a scheduled change is processed, due to the fact that the world may have changed for some number of weeks while it was in a scheduled state, VinylDNS will re-run validations again. If there are warnings at this time, the requirement is to move to PendingReview and alert someone of the issue.
• VALIDATE - an authorized reviewer can re-validate a Scheduled change prior to processing to ensure that there are no new warnings that may occur.
• CANCEL - the requester may cancel the request at anytime before it is processed.
• REJECT - an authorized reviewer may reject the request at anytime before it is processed.

Transitions

• On PROCESS
  • if no new warnings --> goto Processing where changes are applied
  • if new warnings --> goto PendingReview where the reviewer can remediate
  • if scheduled not elapsed --> stay and notify user the scheduled time has not elapsed
• On VALIDATE
  • if no new warnings --> stay until scheduled datetime elapses
  • if new warnings --> goto PendingReview
• On CANCEL --> goto Cancelled, capturing the user cancelling the request and the cancellation time.
• On REJECT --> goto a Rejected state, capturing the user rejecting the request, an optional rejection reason.

Processing

Processing is a temporary state during which a Batch Change is being applied to the DNS backend

Actions

NONE

Transitions

• if all changes fail in batch --> goto Failed
• if some changes fail in batch --> goto PartialFailure
• if all changes succeed in batch --> goto Complete

[pauljamescleary]

@britneywright updated to put REJECT back in.

[britneywright]

don’t forget the existing statuses, Complete, Failed and PartialFailure that will come after PendingReview or Scheduled.

This kind of brings us back to approval status and how the two are essentially the same except that an approved batch change could fail or partial fail during the backend processing