Azure Blob Storage Connector for TotalAgility & RPA

The Blob Storage Helper is an Azure Function that provides a simplified integration into Azure Blob Storage for use with Tungsten Automation's TotalAgility and RPA solutions. It deploys as a stand-alone Azure function with associated TotalAgility Custom Services to list, create, read, update and delete files on Azure Blob Storage from business process, workflows, RPA automation bots and forms.

This open-source project deploys a standalone, serverless Azure Function that can be called as a Microservice or Connector from Tungsten Automation's TotalAgility, RPA, or other system, via a simple JSON over HTTP, RPC style interface. This provides a low cost, scalable and secure method to connect TotalAgility to Azure Blob Storage.

The function provides a simplified interface for interacting with Azure Blob Storage, and associated TotalAgility Custom Services to use the Blob Storage Connector in workflow processes, forms etc. 

Key Features:

• Create / delete storage containers.
• Create, Read, Update, and Delete for files in an Azure Blob Storage container, inc. directory support.
• Listing available files in a container.
• Adding meta-data to a file.
• Retrieving a SAS (Shared Access Signature) for temporary/one time access to files via a browser.
• Retrieving a connection string URL for a container.
• TotalAgility Custom Services to call the connector from business processes, workflows, forms etc.
• An example workflow process and form to illustrate how to use the Custom Services.

The function is stateless, and no data is stored in Azure after a call is complete. The function can be deployed in any Azure regions that supports Azure Functions. The storage account key should be stored securely in TotalAgility / the calling system or retrieved dynamically from an Azure Key Store / AWS Key Vault (or equivalent that is used in your environment) using the TotalAgility support for these systems.

The function essentially provides a proxy interface to interact with Azure Blob Storage, removing the need to manage security calls, header checksums etc. in TotalAgility, greatly simplifying the integration.

The function code is implemented in node.js.

Simplified integration into Azure Blob Storage, for both data/document ingestion into and out of TotalAgility, supporting a wide range of common use cases including:

• Feeding high quality, validated data extracted from documents, emails, websites and other unstructured sources to:
• Machine Learning models
• AI / Chatbot Knowledge Bases for Retrieval Augmented Generation
• GPT/LLM Model Customisation datasets 
• Pushing data to and from Cloud Storage
• Feeding data & content to and from a Data Lake
• Centralised logging
• Document Archiving
• Processing large documents sets stored in the cloud

The GitHub project includes:

• The source code for the function (written in node.js / JavaScript).
• Deployment instructions to create the function on Azure and associated resource groups etc. (using the AZ command line).
• A postman project to illustrate how to call the function standalone.
• A 8.0 TotalAgility package containing:
• Preconfigured Custom Services and Data Models to interact with the connector function. 
• An example form showing how to use the Custom Services.
• An example workflow process showing how to use the Custom Services in an automation.
• Packages for earlier versions of TotalAgility can be made available on request.
• Documentation. 

Microsoft Azure Subscription for the Storage Accounts and to deploy the connector function.