topic Re: How to give input to recipe? in Workato Pros Discussion Board

How to give input to recipe?

naveenthurga201 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 04:48:49 GMT

I have a requirement where my user needs to give inputs to recipe when they start like give me records from today to next 6 months ?
How can we do this like how can we configure recipe to accept inputs ?

Re: How to give input to recipe?

jblanchett — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 05:51:59 GMT

You need a form of some kind to accept input. One common one would be setting up a Slack Command to do this, but you can build it with any form-based application (e.g. NetSuite). We have a concept I built here at SeatGeek called "Integrate-on-Demand".

The flow is like this:

1. Slack Command --> User is presented with a menu of buttons. One is "Integrate-on-Demand". Workato replaces that message with a "Thanks. Workbot will ping you with your integration options shortly."

2. Workato gets the user attributes from HRIS, determines what integrations can be run, and sends user a message with a Picklist of integrations they have authority to run on-demand

3. User selects integration. Workato replaces message from step 2 with. "Thanks! Checking for Integration Parameters".

4. Workato gets a set of integration parameters for the integration (lookup table config). Sends new form to user to select integration parameters.

5. User selects parameters. Workato replaces the message from step 4 with "Your integration is running! Check #some-channel for updates". E.g. we use a channel called #adaptive-integrations to post integration run status related to Adaptive Insights.

6. The recipe listening to this last slack command will then have to call a callable recipe with all of the user-entered inputs as inputs to the callable recipe

Re: How to give input to recipe?

naveenthurga201 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 06:35:35 GMT

Thanks this is excellent idea using slack bot . Any other way like not using bots , if they have access only to workato , they select recipe and give input to it ? Anything like this can be done in workato ?

Re: How to give input to recipe?

jblanchett — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 06:41:43 GMT

The only ways I can think of to do it within Workato would be really clunky and full of security issues, I wouldn't recommending going that route. Users would need to modify variables in recipes and run them, add entries to lookup tables that trigger jobs, or run a predefined set of recipes in a folder called something specific, like "user triggered folders" that have the inputs predefined then call the actual recipes with predefined inputs, which are stored in another folder.

Re: How to give input to recipe?

naveenthurga201 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 06:48:29 GMT

U mean create callable recipe which will have inputs and then call them from another recipe by modifying inputs?

Re: How to give input to recipe?

dcornwell — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 08:23:28 GMT

I'd look at whether you have any other systems which users already use which Workato can be connected to. One of those could have forms functonality (or some kind of object creation) which could trigger the Workato recipe to run using their entered data as input.

Other than that, some other kind of forms solution where authenticated users can submit requests to trigger the recipe.

There's also Workato's 'People Task' functionality. Not very experienced with that but maybe it would let users input data that the recipe would then use.

Re: How to give input to recipe?

james-ng — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 09:35:54 GMT

If users have access to Workato, they can provide inputs in Properties (Tools -> Properties). Then the recipe can work using the data pills from Properties (get data pills from the step before step 1)

Re: How to give input to recipe?

jblanchett — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 09:39:13 GMT

Yes. I would be wary about what you give users access to, though. You only want users to have access to the right set of folders and permissions. You also only want authorized users to have access to more global settings such as lookup tables, properties, etc.

Re: How to give input to recipe?

naveenthurga201 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 14:02:30 GMT

Thanks for all suggestions