How to give input to recipe?

[naveenthurga201]

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 ?

[jblanchett]

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

[naveenthurga201]

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 ?

[jblanchett]

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.

[naveenthurga201]

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