topic Wildcard Search Results from a Lookup Table in Workato Pros Discussion Board

Wildcard Search Results from a Lookup Table

mahlon — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:09:01 GMT

As part of a recipe, I'm looking to include an IF check to confirm whether a Lookup Table has been populated yet. I'd like to use the Lookup formula (https://docs.workato.com/en/formulas/other-formulas.html#lookup) to perform this check by checking whether the table has any rows present, as it doesn't incur a Task (instead of the Lookup Table action, SQL transform, etc). However it looks like the formula currently only returns exact matches, so I only get results for "lorem ipsum", not for "lorem", "l", etc. Is there another way to check whether a lookup table has been populated?

Re: Wildcard Search Results from a Lookup Table

shivakumara — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:50:17 GMT

Hi @mahlon ,

A Lookup Table search in Workato supports exact matching only. When a substring or partial value is passed, no error is raised, but the result set is empty because no exact match is found.
To avoid this, pass the complete search value from the previous step, which ensures that the lookup table is queried with a value that actually exists, increasing the reliability of the lookup result.

Here is an example where you can apply ternary operator, to apply/assign the value.

Thanks and Regards,
Shivakumara K A