Decisions Environment Variables

Overview

Environment variables provide a way to configure and customize the behavior of applications inside containers. These variables align with the settings outlined in the Settings.xml file, encompassing tasks such as setting up a container's database connection or configuring HTTPS.

Decisions, when deployed in Containers, follow a pre-configured settings.xml file to deploy it successfully. Although users cannot directly modify the values in the settings.xml, they can override the properties by using environment variables.

Example YAML File

Refer to the following YAML file, which includes all the required environment variables to successfully host a container.

services:
    decisions-1:
        env_file: 
            - 940.env
        container_name: ${CONNAME}
        image: ${DECIMAGE}
        ports:
          - ${PORT80}
          - ${PORT443}
        environment:
          - DECISIONS_DATABASETYPE=MSSQL
          - DECISIONS_DATABASECONNECTSTRING=${DBSTRING}
          - DECISIONS_PORTALBASEURL=${BASEPORTAL}
          - DECISIONS_ENVIRONMENTNAME=${CONNAME}
          - DECISIONS_HTTPSCERTIFICATEPATH=${CERTPATH}
          - DECISIONS_ENABLEHTTPS=${HTTPSONOROFF} 
          - DECISIONS_FILESTORAGELOCATION=/opt/decisions/data
          - DECISIONS_DEFAULTSAMESITECOOKIEMODE=${COOKIEMODE} 
          - DECISIONS_ENABLESINGLESIGNON=${SSO_TORF}
          - DECISIONS_DISABLEAUTOSSOSIGNINPARAMETER=${SSOBYPASS_TORF}
          - DECISIONS_SERVERTYPE=${DECISIONS_SERVERTYPE}
          - DECISIONS_LICENSECOMPANYID=${DECISIONS_LICENSECOMPANYID}
          - DECISIONS_LICENSECOMPANYNAME=${DECISIONS_LICENSECOMPANYNAME}
          - DECISIONS_LICENSECONTACTEMAIL=${DECISIONS_LICENSECONTACTEMAIL}
          - DECISIONS_LICENSETYPE=${DECISIONS_LICENSETYPE}
          - DECISIONS_ADMINISTRATOR_EMAIL=${DECISIONS_ADMINISTRATOR_EMAIL}
          - DECISIONS_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD=${DECISIONS_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_BYPASSSMTPSERVER=${DECISIONS_MAIL_BYPASSSMTPSERVER}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_SERVERADDRESS=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_SERVERADDRESS}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_PORT=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_PORT}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_REQUIRESAUTHENTICATION=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_REQUIRESAUTHENTICATION}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USERNAME=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USERNAME}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_PASSWORD=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_PASSWORD}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USESSL=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USESSL}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USEIMPLICITSSL=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_USEIMPLICITSSL}
          - DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_SKIPCERTIFICATEREVOCATIONCHECK=${DECISIONS_MAIL_SMTPSERVER_SKIPCERTIFICATEREVOCATIONCHECK}
          - DECISIONS_ALLOWCOMMANDEXECUTIONINSTEPS=true
          - LANG=en_US.UTF-8
          - LANGUAGE=en_US:en
          - LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
          - LOG_FILEPATH=/opt/decisions/logs
        volumes:
          - ${VOL_FILESTORAGE}
          - ${VOL_CERT}  

"UserBrowserTimezoneForTranslation" has been added to the Settings.xml file for v9.14 and above. Users who want to use this setting in a container will need to add Decisions_USEBROWSERTIMEZONEFORTRANSLATION=true to the YAML file. 

Required Environment Variables

To successfully host a container instance, the following environment variables are necessary.

Note: To configure the Container as required, refer to the later sections in the article.

Additional Environment Variables

The following section demonstrates additional, optional environment variables users may need to configure based on their application's use case.

Securing Decisions Container Environment

To enhance the security of a Decisions Environment within containers, users can set various environment variables, including HTTPS, ForceBaseURI, and more. For more information, refer to Securing Decisions Container Environment.

Allow installing/updating Python packages in Containers

Decisions Containers run as a non-root user. If a Flow needs to install or update Python packages using the Execute Command step, users must enable command execution in steps by setting the following environment variable in the YAML file.

Note: Enabling command execution allows shell commands to run from Flows. Only enable this when required, and restrict access to only those who can configure/run the related Flows.

Changing the default file storage location

The default file storage location of the Decisions Container is at /opt/decisions/data. Users can use the following variable to change the default location.

Changing the default log file location

By default, Decisions writes log files under the instance base directory. In container deployments, this typically aligns with the file storage location. In Linux environments where file storage is hosted remotely (e.g., cloud file shares), frequent log writes can impact performance. The LOG_FILEPATH environment variable redirects Decisions log output to a specified path to avoid writing logs to a remote file storage location.

Licensing

The following variables are used to license the Decisions environment. Without a License, users cannot log into the containerized environment. For more information, refer to the Decisions License.

Clustering

The following optional environment variables are required to set up a clustered environment.

Non-root Users

The following optional variable will allow support for non-root users. This is only available in v9.8+. This should be added under the services section of the YAML file.

Integration

The following optional variables allow users to configure Integration settings within the Portal.

For more information, refer to Integration Settings and How to Set Up and Use JWT.

Azure Logging

The following environment variables can be used to configure the Azure Log Analytics.

AWS Logging and IAM credentials

The following optional environment variables are recommended for setting up AWS CloudWatch Logging.

Settings.xml and its corresponding Environment Variable

In Settings.xml, we modify the values between the tags to adjust the server settings. However, to configure the same settings in containers, we need to follow a naming convention: DECISIONS_<SettingName>=<Value of the setting>.

Feature Changes