Automate Concepts

To access Actify Automate, find the menu item under Centro in the global navigation control:

Topics

Terms & Concepts

Workspace

The Automate workspace is the first page you see when entering the Actify Automate tool. From here you can manage your Connectors and Recipes, using a folder-like interface.

The Actify Automate workspace

Connectors & Connections

Connectors provide the mechanism for connecting and exchanging data with other systems. Each Connector supports a series of triggers and actions for a specific app. The platform provides a wide range of available Connectors, for productivity tools (such as Outlook, Slack etc.) and business systems (ex. Salesforce, Oracle etc.). Actify provides one for APM itself, as well as a connector for the PLEX manufacturing system. (see Provided Connectors)

To enable a Connector for one or more recipes, a Connection must be setup to associate the access and authentication information with the Connector so that it can conduct operations - recipes then use that Connection to perform the desired activity. Different Connections can be made from the same Connector, for example to employ different access permissions for accessing different types of data in the same system or for different instances of the same system type.

Connections are found or managed under the Assets area in the workspace:

Workspace Connection Status

Recipes

Recipes are the automation workflows and can be easily created or modified with the drag-and-drop editor. Several example recipes are provided. These should always be cloned and edited before use to configure connections and customer-specific settings.

In addition, a number of callable recipe functions are provided for typical sub-actions that can be included in other recipes. Recipe functions can be included in a top-level recipe using the "Recipe function by Workato" Connector. The set of provided recipes are grouped in folders under the Projects area in the workspace. Customer can create additional or variant recipes in the provided folders or add further folders (recommended). 

Recipes that are activated or running are found and can be monitored from the Assets area.

Workspace Recipe Status

When you first enter the Workspace you will find the Actify Standard Recipes folder, which contains the Actify recipe library which you can use to kickstart your own automations. (See Example Recipes)

Viewing the Example Recipes

Dashboard

The Dashboard link in the header row provides a filterable monitoring station for recipe execution with a Jobs Graph activity chart and a more detailed Activity audit trail of key events/actions. 

Typical Dashboard view

Lookup Tables

These provide a row-and-column place to store data usable in recipes, for example so that a recipe could convert a 2-character country or customer code from system A into a standard text name for updating into APM. Tables can be populated via CSV upload or the UI. In addition, recipes can add/update/delete table entries and conduct lookups against them. 

Example Lookup Table

Further Information

In addition to the Actify AutomateHelp, further detailed information about the underlying Workato platform is available at : https://docs.workato.com/