09-Manual-Workflow.md

Manual Workflows

Workflows can be triggered by one of the following manual interactions:

1. GitHub API
2. GitHub CLI
3. GitHub GUI (browser interface)

There are a couple of requirements in order for this to be enabled on a workflow:

1. The workflow must be in the default branch
2. The workflow must contain the workflow_dispatch event.

The following exercise will walk you through creating a manually triggered workflow, and then have you perform a manual execution through the GitHub GUI.

Step 1: Create a new workflow to be triggered manually

The only step in this exercise is to add the workflow to your default branch directly.

1. Checkout the default branch of your repository
2. Create a new file named .github/workflows/manual.yaml
3. Copy the contents below to the newly created file:

name: Manual Workflow
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      choice-example:
        description: Choice Example
        required: true
        default: warning
        type: choice
        options:
        - info
        - warning
        - debug
      string-example:
        description: String Example
        required: true
        default: input
        type: string
jobs:
  do-things:
    name: Do Things Manually
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Do A Thing
        run: echo "I've done a thing manually with '${{ inputs.choice-example }}' and '${{ inputs.string-example }}'!"

4. Add, commit, and push your changes to the default branch.
5. Go to your repository, and view the Actions tab to see the workflow you created (Manual Workflow)

The result will be a button (when viewing your workflow) you can use to execute the workflow.

Step 2: Execute the workflow

1. From the workflow view (see previous step):
2. Click the "Run workflow" drop down button and then the green "Run Workflow" button:

The result will be an execution of the workflow above.

Step 3: Clean Up

No further steps are needed as you committed directly to the default branch.