---

title: Workflow Steps layout: website-normal children:

• { section: Workflow Control }
• { section: External Actions }
• { section: Application Models }
• { section: General Purpose }
• { section: Index of Step Types }

---

Apache Brooklyn workflow supports a range of step types covering the most common activities commonly done as part of application management. These are divided into the following groups:

• Workflow Control: use local variables and control flow, with step types such as let, return, and retry
• External Actions: interact with external systems using step types such as container, ssh, winrm, and http
• Application Models: work with the models stored in Brooklyn, doing things such as invoke-effector, set-sensor, deploy-application, and add-entity
• General Purpose: miscellaneous step types such as log and sleep

Custom step types can be written and added to the catalog, either written as workflow using these primitives (including doing virtually anything in a container) or by implementing a Java type, both as described here. An index of all out-of-the-box step types is included at the end of this section.

{% jsonball steps from yaml file steps.yaml %} {% assign step_summaries = "" | split: ", " %}

{% for x in steps %}

{% assign step_summaries = step_summaries | concat: x.steps %}

{{ x.section_name }}

{{ x.section_intro }}

{% for step in x.steps %}

{{ step.name }}

{{ step.summary }}

{% if step.shorthand %} Shorthand: {{ step.shorthand }} {% endif %}

{% if step.input %} Input parameters: {{ step.input }} {% endif %}

{% if step.output %} Output return value: {{ step.output }} {% endif %}

{% endfor %}

{% endfor %}

Index of Step Types

{% assign step_summaries = step_summaries | sort: “name” %}

• [{% if x.shorthand %}{{ x.name }}{% else %}{{ x.name }}{% endif %}](#{{ x.name }})

{% endfor %}