What's New with SAS Model Manager? Simplified workflow-based KPI alerting

3 Likes

SAS Workflow Manager is a BPMN standard process management solution used by other SAS products for business process customization. For instance, SAS Model Manager includes access to SAS Workflow Manager allowing customers to create custom model life cycles and other custom business processes. Specifically, SAS Workflow Manager allows users to design, execute, audit, and refine their common business processes to provide:

routing and management of tasks requiring user interaction
automated triggering of basic actions and alerts

Users customize and build business processes that include user tasks, manual gates, and/or approvals for integrating with third-party orchestration tools like Jenkins and other MLOps tools via REST APIs. SAS Workflow Manager automates and versions these tasks, allowing users to work on tasks, be prompted with available options, and receive notifications. Additionally, all tasks are tracked from time started to time completed with a full breakdown by task for governance purposes.

Customizable workflow definition example:

Review the status of a running workflow instance:

With the SAS Model Manager 2020.1.5 April stable release, we included a simplified workflow-based KPI email notification alerting when the project's model performance exceeds the assessment criteria threshold value. The workflow is called "SimpleModelMonitor" and is included out-of-the-box and will appear in the SAS Workflow Manager definitions list.

This video shows the implemented workflow-based integration.

(view in My Videos)

Sample workflow definition (BPMN) file

To access the SAS Workflow Manager workflow, please download the SimpleModelMonitor_April2021.bpmn file from the Samples folder within the Model Management Resources for Open-Source Models GitHub repo.

Setting the preferences

For each workflow user wanting to receive an email notification as part of a flow, add the following preferences: Notifications.Directed.Channels and OfflineLocale.DefaultLocale.

To add the preferences use the following REST API call:

POST /preferences/preferences/<user login id>
Headers: Content-type: application/json
Body:
{
"items":[{
"id": "Notifications.Directed.Channels",
"description": "user notification directed channel default",
"application": "notifications",
"value": "mail",
"version": 1
},{
"id": "OfflineLocale.DefaultLocale",
"description": "user notification locale default",
"application": "notifications",
"value": "en-US",
"version": 1
}]
}

Configure Email Service

In order to send email notifications, it is also necessary to configure the email service. This is done in the Environment Manager.

Set the configuration of the Mail Service with a host:

It is also common to set the fromAddress and the fromPersonalName properties. This applies to all email sent from by the Mail service. Full configuration is for the service is available in the Viya admin guide.

Why integrate SAS Workflow Manager with SAS Model Manager?

Including simplified workflow-based KPI alerting is one example of how SAS Model Manager integrates with SAS Workflow Manager. The pairing of these technologies allows users to define, automate, audit and refine business processes. Integration of custom workflows orchestrated through SAS Model Manager allows users to functionally integrate business objectives and inputs into an automated workflow. In turn, adjust considerations based on model accuracy for which models should stay in operation, when users need to be notified, when organizational accountability risk is increased and many other business related impacts are at risk or experienced.

SAS Workflow Manager provides the tools to rapidly integrate fundamental workflow management into business operations and business offerings based on SAS solutions and products.

Want to learn more about SAS Workflow Manager?

Interested to learn how to improve model management and workflow management by ensuring your tools, processes and environments are as efficient as possible? Check our the video on the Automating Model Life Cycle Management with SAS Model Manager and SAS Workflow Manager article.

Also, refer to our SophiaRowland's article Building Performance Monitoring Processes in SAS Workflow Manager for more information about how to use SAS Workflow Manager.

See the SAS Workflow Manager: Help Center documentation for more information about SAS Workflow Manager.

Discover new SAS Viya 2020.1.5 features

(view in My Videos)

Discover new SAS Model Manager features

SophiaRowland · ‎06-07-2021

I'm really happy to see a sample workflow provided in Workflow Manager! Great work 🙂