1. Overview
   
1. Overview
In a VMware® vCloud® environment, sometimes a mechanism is required to consistently complete tasks outside the scope of VMware vCloud Director®. As an example, it might be necessary to coordinate a sequence of tasks among multiple products or to communicate with external systems. VMware vCenter™ Orchestrator can be used in these cases.
vCenter Orchestrator can automate tasks across VMware products, including many of those in the VMware vCloud Suite. vCenter Orchestrator provides a large library of workflows and actions in its base configuration, and its library grows with each newly installed plug-in. You can build powerful workflows with little or no knowledge of an API.
The following sections provide example workflows that complement vCloud deployments and enable the orchestration of multiple products through tight integration at the API level. Although VMware offers other products with workflow capabilities, these examples are specific to vCenter Orchestrator.