Cost and design strategy choices

[plmrskopecek]

Howdy,

I'm roughly new to Workato but have been in development for decades.  While I see a lot of potential value in the solution as an integrative, orchestration, and governing platform...I struggle to frame some of the design options such that I can move forward building solutions.  The core issue is around design choices which affect cost.  Workato provides limiting features through recipe creation and task execution.  Due to this, I have to master/sub recipes which starts to breakdown some of the value add of Workato's governing facilitation.  Also tasks are counted for even accessing a variable (lookup table) at a notably high cost rate.  One of our needs includes on-prem agent so that actions which require our IP address can process.  However, the orchestration/execution logic cannot operate on an agent.  All the agent can do is execute a script/exe...which is me just not using Workato.

Since I'm newer to Workato, I thought I'd reach out here to see if others have tips/tricks or other insights.  Just to note, I did cover these challenges with our account rep, but the responding solution was directed towards spend more vs efficient reasonable options.

[plmrskopecek]

I will note that I have seen the tip to use batching where possible.  I agree with that strategy for general design where it makes sense anyway.  The design challenges that I'm trying to consider won't be fixed by an individual batch.

For an example of a design challenge.  Workato provides lookup tables, for cheaper writes to queuing and then batch processing...it sounds like it would make more sense for me to setup an Azure/AWS queue to feed data into and then batch consume in Workato for processing.  However, it's just one of those things where I feel I have to ask myself why I need to build around Workato instead of utilizing it.  Hence where I think I'm possibly missing some form of tip/trick/etc.

[mppowe]

Some of what you say resonates as far as certain actions consuming tasks that seem unnecessary, like defining variables/lists or calling Recipe Functions.  For myself, there have been times where I've seen big gaps in the Workato offering, only to find out that it really was provided in a connector or feature I wasn't aware of, or by using recipe design in a way I hadn't thought of before.  The product definitely seems to benefit from having a developer's mind/experience, but it absolutely has required a different way of thinking for me to use properly.  I'm not sure I can articulate how/why, but just the general flow of things.

Is there a particular Use Case where you've wanted to design something and found Workato's options to be too limiting? Maybe we can pick that example apart and see what we can come up with?

[plmrskopecek]

Thanks for the feedback.  Trying not to duplicate, I posted a scenario below.

[rachelnatik · Accepted solution]

I suggest this recent webinar by Workato. I learned some really good stuff.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rachel-natik_integration-automation-activity-7090441828235186177-Bjf2...