Administer Library Objects › Create and Manage Folders › Set Up Folders for Design › Plan the Folder Structure

Plan the Folder Structure

One of your first decisions as a new CA Process Automation administrator is how to organize and use folders in the Library tab. The folder structure can be as deep as you find practical.

To ease the task of preparing for export, set up a folder structure similar to this one before design work begins. That is, at the root level of the Library, create a folder for each process you plan to automate. Under each process-level folder, create a release-level folder using your own naming conventions for the first release version. If you create updates to a process, you can add new folders for the subsequent release versions.

/ (root folder)
Automated Process1 

Release Version 1 
Release Version 2

Automated Process 2

Release Version 1
Release Version 2 

When you deploy the first release version of the first process you automate, you export the release version folder, which contains all of the objects contained in that release.

Consider the following approaches to creating a folder structure:

• Create the export structure from the start and use the release version folder as the working folder. Content designers then create, update, and test objects within the release version folder or one of its subfolders. Whatever folder structure is created here and exported is reproduced in the production environment upon import.
• Create working folders. Then, when the first release version of a process is ready for deployment, create the export folder and populate it with the objects that are part of the release version.
• Hybrid approach. Create the export structure and use the export folder for the upcoming release version as the working folder but keep objects that are shared across processes in a different root-level folder. For example, multiple processes can share named datasets and specific subprocesses. Calendars can be shared across schedules. Global schedules can be shared. Then, as part of preparation for export, copy the required objects from the shared objects folder to the export folder.

Note: If you export a folder with absolute paths, the complete folder structure of the export folder is replicated in the production environment when contents are imported.