How triggers, conditions, and actions perform in Workato enterprise automation platform?

Workato is a modern enterprise automation platform that facilitates the integration of different business applications, including CRM (Customer Relationship Management), RPA (Robotic Process Automation), and accounting. Companies can lean on Workato to address all the core use cases built on iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service).

It’s an end-to-end enterprise automation solution, enabling businesses to leverage advanced tools, platforms, and technologies such as GitHub, Workspace, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to pursue full-fledged automation of rule-based tasks and functions. A serverless platform, Workato supports complete agility and scalability concerning automation and allows incremental restructuring of business workflows, ensuring minimal operational disruption with no data loss.

Different types of enterprise automation components offered by Workato

Workato consists of feature-rich recipes that define steps, guiding business applications while coordinating to perform diverse tasks efficiently through application integration and workflow automation. The recipes allow seamless handling of application integration and the different scenarios concerning the automation of business workflows. From simplifying the complexities involved in data transformation to handling conditional triggers and actions with low code and powerful logic, recipes in Workato enable users to manage it all.

The following are the three main components of Workato recipes:

• Connections
• Triggers
• Actions

Let’s briefly learn about these three components.

1. Connections

Connections are vital to connecting the different types of applications such as Salesforce, Jira, and Slack. Here we mainly have to connect the target-side applications. When a user uses the Workato enterprise automation platform to authenticate and give permission to have instant access to applications’ data, it results in connections. Every different connection that is created must respond to a specific application instance. Therefore, as far as the application instance is concerned, multiple recipes can utilize the same connections related to the instance. However, it is to be noted that every time a recipe communicates with an application, users must authenticate the communication using the Workato platform. The authentication and authorization of communication are OAuth-based, and Workato uses applications’ API and API keys.

2. Triggers

A trigger is an event that starts the recipe and executes specific tasks performed in a particular application. It determines what events it should listen to and respond to while completing the actions described in a recipe. Triggers can be categorized into different types based on when and how to check for new events. There are mainly three types of triggers, i.e., Polling, Real-Time, and Scheduler.

a. Polling

• Workato mainly consists of triggers that are poll-based. Trigger events are continuously scrutinized by trigger applications and monitored at regular intervals.
• Polling triggers checks for the new events periodically. It works in collaboration with the applications to ensure whether any recent events are available or not. In polling notifications, generally, the recipe enters a particular app to check for the new jobs at set intervals.
• As the recipe starts and stops, the polling trigger starts and stops fetching event details from the trigger application. However, the polling trigger has to retrieve all the events once the recipe starts again.

b. Real-Time

• Real-time triggers are underpinned with a robust mechanism known as asynchronous notification, enabling recipes to pick up jobs as soon as they occur.
• While using real-time triggers, users must perform API- or manual-based registration right in the application. It allows applications to determine whether the user is interested in events. Applications can, therefore, generate a trigger for new events and send instant notifications to the Workato platform.
• Real-time triggers are mostly supported by the Workato platform and are generated leveraging the Webhooks mechanism. Webhooks scenario is efficient and allows users to receive notifications from applications without delay.

c. Scheduler

• Scheduled triggers are executed at the scheduled date, time, or interval on an hourly, daily, and monthly basis when events match the specified criteria.
• Once the events are already picked up, scheduled triggers can return the same.

3. Actions

Under actions, a set of steps are performed once the recipe is triggered, and based on the requirement, users define the conditions such as error monitoring and data mapping. It ensures the availability of connectors required to perform actions, and Workato makes the same ready to perform operations, such as creating a pie chart and getting the file from a URL. Actions will carry out a process in the target side application. Connectors in the Workato platform facilitate actions, grouped into six different types, i.e., Create, Update, Search, Get, Upsert, and Delete.

a. Create

• Users can trigger the Create object action to define new standards or build custom objects.
• This action will generate an ID that supports the identification of objects that are newly created.
• Based on the Workato API connected to the applications, It will return objects along with the fields.

b. Update

• The Update Object action allows incorporating changes in the objects that already exist.
• It is the data that generates input while identifying objects that are to be updated.
• This action returns the ID or objects along with the fields of the updated object.

c. Search

• Users can use the Search action, which leverages the data, to search and identify objects.
• After matching the search criteria, the Search action will identify objects and create a list for the same.

d. Get

• Get action is similar to search action, but it is more pinpointed and requires a unique ID identifying the object to be passed.
• Suppose an object is available, it will return the details of that particular object.
• If the object is not available, then it throws an error.

e. Upsert

• Upsert action is a combination of search and creates while updating actions.

f. Delete 

• The Delete action helps in deleting an object that already exists.
• An ID gives the input that helps identify the objects that are to be deleted.

How do conditions work in the Workato platform?

Conditions are an easy way to filter events that need processing, and trigger conditions sets the rules and criteria that help identify the trigger events that are to be processed. Conditions allow us to add more logic to our recipe flow.

Conditions are further divided into three different types, i.e., Data, Condition, and Value.

Data is derived from applications, and the Value, on the other hand, is the static variable. It is to be noted that both of these parts are case-sensitive. Users can bind multiple conditions and pair them up with AND or OR operators to make complex conditions, which would be applicable to work with different types of data. However, invalid cases may prevent the start of the recipe.

Starts with condition

• Starts With condition checks whether the trigger data begins with the value or not. 
• If it is case-sensitive, users need to check whether down a case or up a case before comparison.

Ends with condition

• Ends With condition checks whether the trigger data ends with the value.
• If it is case-sensitive, users need to check whether down a case or up a case before comparison.

Does not contain condition

• The Does Not Contain condition checks if the trigger data DOES NOT contain the value.
• If it is case-sensitive, users need to check whether down a case or up a case before comparison.

Does not start with condition

• Does Not Start With condition is the opposite of the Starts With condition.
• It checks if the trigger data string DOES NOT begin with the value.

Does not end with condition

• Does Not End With Condition is the opposite of the Ends With condition.
• It checks if the trigger data DOES NOT end with the value.

Equals condition

• Equals condition checks if the trigger data equals the value or not.
• It works with any words, characters, letters, symbols, and numbers.

Does not equal

• It is the opposite of the Equal condition, and it checks if the trigger data DOES NOT equal the value.
• Does not equal condition works with any words, characters, letters, symbols, and numbers.

Greater than condition

• This condition works on the trigger data and checks if the data is greater than the value or not.

Less than condition

• This condition works on the trigger data and checks if the data is less than its value.

Is true condition

• Is True condition is a Boolean type, and it checks if the trigger data is true or not.

Is not true condition

• Is Not True condition is the opposite of the Is True condition, and it will check that the trigger data IS NOT true.

Is present condition

• Is Present condition checks the trigger data. 
• If there is data present, the recipe will pick up the trigger event. If the input is null or an empty string is there, the recipe will not pick up the trigger event.

Is not present condition

• If there is data present, the recipe WILL NOT pick up the trigger event. In case the input is null, or an empty string is there, the trigger event WILL pick up the recipe.

Pursue seamless enterprise automation by leveraging Workato

Workato redefines automation for enterprises and unlocks a deluge of opportunities. With a better understanding of the above-discussed components of Workato, it would become convenient for enterprises to create and customize to their specific business needs. With the easy-to-understand and simplified components, it becomes seamless for companies to automate and accelerate end-to-end business tasks, perform tasks remotely, attain accuracy, and achieve maximum resource optimization.