Workato University
Introduction to Recipe Building and Troubleshooting
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By the end of this module, we should
Understand the fundamentals of recipe building
and troubleshooting on Workato.
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Module Overview
1. Useful concepts to start with
2. Designing simple, resilient recipes
a. Defensive recipe building
b. Recipe and kitchen hygiene
3. Troubleshooting: Why isn’t this working?
a. Reproduce the problem
b. Common hiccups, and where to find their solutions
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What we’re automating today
Salesforce
Opportunity
Created
1 Connect to apps
Notify team 2 Build the recipe
3 Troubleshoot errors
Send email
through
Workato
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Useful concepts to start with
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Useful concepts to start with
Basic exposure to:
● Connectors
● Recipes
● Datatree, Data pills, Data types
● Triggers
● Actions
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Before we begin
Create a Workato Account (free):
1. Sign up for a free Workato Account: https://www.workato.com/users/sign_up
2. Fill in your mobile number and select either IT or Business.
3. You’ll be brought to a page that will prompt you to choose apps you use. For now,
just click on the workato logo on the top left-hand corner
Salesforce Account Setup (2 mins):
1. Go to https://developer.salesforce.com/signup
2. Fill in your details and submit
3. Go to your email inbox, open the verification email and verify your account
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Designing simple, resilient recipes
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We need to design for a lot of uncertainty…
Who What applications and accounts need authenticated Connections?
What What are we precisely trying to achieve?
When When do we trigger, and how do we configure the triggers?
Where are fields mapped between applications? Which actions do we need in order
Where
to build out the full automation?
Why do we need this automation? What happens when something changes? How
Why
else might we automate this?
How How will the end user experience this automation?
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…So we use a structured approach
What + Why Have we elegantly solved the business problem yet?
Trigger Successfully test one trigger event
Actions Successfully test actions by adding them one (or several) at a time
Break it early Future-proof the recipe by stress-testing it
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Hygiene practices
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Recipe naming conventions
In cooking
[Experimental Recipe] Caesar Salad with Pickle Sauce
Recipe type [Experimental Recipe]
Recipe name Caesar Salad with Pickle Sauce
In Workato
[Development] Send Email when Salesforce Opportunity is Created
Recipe type Examples include [Development] and [Completed] and [Production]
Recipe name Send Email when Salesforce Opportunity is Created
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Recipe and kitchen hygiene
Recipe
Title Why does this recipe exist?
Description How does it work? How do I use it?
Action comments Hints, especially when something is non-obvious
Job History How can I get more information about many jobs at one glance?
Kitchen
Folders Group recipes meaningfully
Naming conventions Define naming conventions to be manageable in the long term
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Basic Trigger Troubleshooting
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To heal symptoms, first find the root cause
Trigger issues Action issues
1) Create a new recipe with the same trigger, but with:
a) Minimal trigger customization (no conditions, and as recent “since/from”
as possible where applicable); and
b) No actions.
2) Successfully retrieve a single event with “Test”.
3) Add trigger customizations one at a time, and repeat testing until the
offending customization is determined.
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Basic Action Troubleshooting
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To heal symptoms, first find the root cause
Trigger issues Action issues
1) Create a new recipe for troubleshooting actions:
a) Any reliable trigger, like scheduler (or the failed recipe’s trigger).
b) Retrieve one blank job that we will use for troubleshooting.
2) Identify the actions in the failing recipe that we want to troubleshoot.
3) Add them one at a time to the new recipe, rerun the job we created
for troubleshooting, and repeat until the offending action is isolated.
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Building and Troubleshooting Recipes (Basic)
Making use of common solutions
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Common hiccups, and where to find solutions
Tutorials Solution Articles
https://support.workato.com Forums Expert Hour
Product Hour Product Updates
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End
Introduction to Recipe Building and Troubleshooting
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