Lab: Manual Workflow

Introduction

In this lab, you will create a manual workflow that can be triggered manually. The workflow will simply echo a message to the console, giving you a hands-on understanding of how manual workflows function in GitHub Actions.

Estimated Duration: 15-20 minutes

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Instructions

Step 1: Set up your repository

1. Navigate to the repository you created in the previous lab.
   • If you haven’t completed the previous lab, clone the template repository by following the instructions in the Create Repository Using Template Repository Lab.

Step 2: Create the manual workflow

1. Go to the Actions tab in your repository.
2. Click on the New workflow button.
3. From the list of workflow templates, select Manual workflow, and then click on Configure.
4. This will open the GitHub Actions workflow editor.

Step 3: Add workflow content

1. In the workflow editor:

   • Name the workflow file intro-manual-workflow.yml.
   • Paste the following YAML content into the editor:

   name: Intro - Manual Workflow
   
   on:
     workflow_dispatch:
     push:
       paths:
         - '.github/workflows/intro-manual-workflow.yml'
   
   jobs:
     run:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - name: How's GitHub Actions?
           run: echo "Awesome!!"
   

2. Click the Commit changes button to save the workflow. This will create a new file .github/workflows/intro-manual-workflow.yml in your repository.

Step 4: Understand the workflow

1. The workflow is named Intro - Manual Workflow.
2. It triggers on two events:
   • workflow_dispatch: This allows you to run the workflow manually.
   • push: The workflow will also run when changes are pushed to .github/workflows/intro-manual-workflow.yml.
3. The workflow uses the ubuntu-latest runner and contains a single job named run with one step that outputs the message: Awesome!!.

Step 5: Run the workflow

1. Go back to the Actions tab. You should see the newly created workflow listed there.

   • If the workflow is not running, you can manually trigger it.

2. Click on the Run workflow button.

   • From the dropdown, select the main branch.
   • Click Run workflow to trigger the workflow.

3. Monitor the workflow execution.

   • You will see the workflow listed as running in the Actions tab.

Step 6: View the results

1. Click on the workflow run to view its details.
2. Inside the workflow details page, click on the run job to view the job’s specifics.
3. Expand the step titled How’s GitHub Actions? to view the output.
4. You should see the message Awesome!! displayed as the output of the step.

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Summary

In this lab, you created and ran a manual workflow in GitHub Actions. The workflow was triggered manually, ran a single job, and echoed a message to the console. This lab provided insight into how workflows are defined, triggered, and executed.

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Additional Resources

1. GitHub Actions Documentation