Workato Recipes automate business tasks that used to be done by hand. A Workato meal is a list of actions to be taken and a moment to start them. It runs the steps based on events that set them off. Some examples of automation are onboarding new employees or automating everyday customer care tasks. The drag-and-drop, low-code/no-code layout that Workato offers makes it easy for anyone to use the platform, even those who need to be tech-savvy.
You should make it a habit to follow best practices when designing, making, maintaining, and using Workato Recipes if you want to make them work perfectly and require less work and mistakes from people.
For your convenience, we’ve compiled this great guide that lists all the best ways to use Workato Recipes. If you want to learn more about Workato check out this Workato training course to enhance your career opportunities and develop your Workato skills.
Here are some ways that the Workato app can be used. Let’s start!
Workato Recipe: What Is It?
A Workato recipe isn’t just a list of steps; it’s a strong tool that lets businesses automate difficult tasks and connect different apps without problems. It is a step-by-step guide telling your software programs how to work together to complete certain jobs quickly and easily.
Workato Recipe Creation
Putting together a Workato meal might look hard, but it’s easy if you do it correctly. Quick rundown of how it works:
Figure out your workflow:
First, you must determine which business process or job you want to automate. Make it clear what the inputs, outputs, and intended outcomes are.
Pick out your ingredients:
Pick out the systems and software programs that you want to connect. Workato works with many popular apps, so your automation projects can be customized to fit your needs.
Set up actions and triggers:
Set up the things that will start your plan, like getting an email or a new lead in your CRM. Then, say what you want, such as sending alerts or changing a database.
Draw how data flows:
Plan how data will move between the applications you’ve picked. In this case, you have to say what data should be sent and how it should be changed.
Test and Improve:
Test your method carefully to ensure it works how you want it to before using it. Adjust things as needed to get the best outcomes.
Tips for Making the Best Workato Recipes
Find out about different best practices for planning, making, and keeping up with Workato Recipes:
1. Understand Needs
Before you can automate processes currently done by hand, you must study and understand them. Take note of the smaller details and ask questions like these as you go over the manual processes:
What processes or jobs am I automating?
In what ways could it be broken down?
What business rules do I need to follow? What kind of info do I need to deal with?
What is the format of info coming in and going out?
Does the info need to be checked?
What apps will be used, what jobs will be done automatically by each app, what mistakes could happen, and how do I fix them?
Planning and carrying out your project is easier once you have all these questions and gather as much information as possible.
2. Select Trigger Type: Real-Time, Polled, Batch, Scheduled
In Workato Recipes, you can use four different kinds of events or prompts, i.e.
Real-Time Events/Triggers
Polled Events/Triggers
Batch Events/Triggers
Scheduled Events/Triggers
3. Control Triggers
Workato gives you two ways to filter your trigger events so that only important events run your recipe:
Put a filter on the source:
You can ask apps like Jira, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and more to make triggers like poll and batch triggers work. Depending on the app that sets it off, you can choose areas to narrow the query. There are even question languages that are unique to each app. They let you pick out individual fields based on the business rules you must set up.
Sort by condition:
Once you’ve done that at the source, you can use Workato’s granular filter to make conditional logic that narrows down the causing events even more. This condition for the filter can be used in any situation.
4. Plan for powerlessness
If you aren’t careful when making your Workato Recipe, your recipe could make duplicate records. When you have duplicate information, the quality of your data goes down, and its integrity is lost.
A simple “Create” move might not check to see if the record already exists, which could lead to the creation of two copies of the record. When you’re making your recipes, you should use “Upsert” instead of “Create” to avoid them. If a record already exists, the upsert database action changes it. If it doesn’t exist, it makes a new record. Let’s use an example to help us understand it:
As shown above, you can make your own “Upsert” operation using the Workato recipe. This lets you either update an existing record or build a new one.
5. Stay away from endless loops
Running a recipe with infinite loops can take a lot of work. They can cause one task to use up all the bandwidth, unwanted API calls, job starts that aren’t needed, and other problems. An infinite loop can happen if a recipe calls itself repeatedly or two recipes call each other.
Trigger filters can help you stay away from endless loops. For example, you can use a separate account called “integration_user” to sort events and connect IDs from different apps. After that, use a trigger filter to ignore Workato changes and stay out of endless loops.
6. Reusing and Modularity
Use callable recipes to get more done, spend less time on maintenance, and make your recipes easy to read. You can think of callable recipes as being like “functions” in a computer language. Workato has this feature, so you can call a single plan to do the work repeatedly.
Workato Recipe Security: Best Practices
1. Things to think about when choosing a token, OAuth 2.0, or JWT
Instead of giving out the secret itself, you should give out a JWT code that contains the Auth code secret. Tokens for JWT are signed, include the client’s name, and can have an end date.
2. API tokens are passwords
Like passwords, API keys are private information that can be used to let anyone into your API. Remember never to send API tokens to clients through text messages, emails, or other unprotected methods. There should be a safe way to send messages or files, like Dropbox, that both the API owner and the intended client can view.
3. Avoid sharing API tokens
Give up the same API code to one person. Each API key is unique to a client. It lets you monitor calls for that client in the API dashboard. It is only possible to tell who is calling your API if more than one person has the same API code.
4. Make it a rule to renew API tokens
It would help if you made it a strategy to refresh API tokens every so often. This works like ending a password and ensures that if an API token is stolen, it doesn’t give hackers long-term access to systems. You could also give out a JWT token with an expiry date and time. The ticket will only last for a certain amount of time.
5. Allow your IP address
With the IP safe listing part of the Access Profile for a client, you can limit the IP addresses that can access the API.
However, some clients might have a different IP address. For example, clients connecting from their home networks might get different IP addresses from their service providers or connect from multiple IP addresses (for example, when traveling). In this case, it might be challenging to clear their IPs. Use this if legal requests are still being processed.
6. Data pills to protect critical data
Ensure you never put private information in a recipe as plain text. Use account properties or data pills every time you pass data that needs to be kept secret, like user names, passwords, personal information, or anything else.
Workato Recipe Management Best Practices
1. Put API recipes in order by resource and function
Put Workato recipes in order by the resource or feature they serve. This will help you and everyone else understand exactly what each API is meant to do.
Finding the recipe you need is easier and faster if all the recipes connected to a customer are in one place. If you don’t, looking for the right one will save time. Also, it will help you avoid making the same meals twice.
2. Use standard ways of naming things
Make a rule for naming recipes and APIs, and then follow it for all the recipes and APIs your team makes. The first part of this name can be useful, and the last part should explain what it’s for.
Remember to include the version number so that it’s easy to find. This will help you talk to other people on your team.
3. Collections of Version API
Use a versioning method to keep track of recipes more effectively in your business. This will help devs who use your APIs know about changes made to the most recent version of the APIs.
Conclusion
We have listed the best ways to use Workato Recipes and some examples. The list is organized by topic, such as design, security, speed, organization, etc. Make these habits a part of your daily life for the best success and use of resources.
