Creating a Recipe in Kantata Connect

Learn how to create a recipe in Kantata Connect.

Overview

A recipe is an automated workflow that you can build and customize in Kantata Connect.

In this article, you’ll learn about many of the different tools and components that are available to you as you build your recipes in Kantata Connect. To learn more about the layout of the recipe editor, please see the Recipe Details Page Overview article.

Recipe Components

There are a wide variety of options and configurations available when creating a recipe in Kantata Connect, including the following:

• Connections (required)
• Triggers (required)
• Actions (required)
• Conditions
• Tasks
• Formulas

Connections

A Connection links Kantata Connect with an external application. A connection is required before you can build a recipe.

For example, once you create a BambooHR connection, you can then connect BambooHR’s data to Kantata OX’s data. Using that connection, you can then create a recipe for those two applications.

To learn about creating a connection, see the Creating a Connection in Kantata Connect article.

Triggers

A Trigger is an event that signals for the workflow to begin. For example, if you create a recipe with the New/updated employee in BambooHR, the main steps in the workflow will occur in the set order whenever you create a new employee or update employee information in your BambooHR account.

When you create a new recipe, you’re prompted to select a starting point (or trigger type).

• Trigger from an app
• Run on a schedule
• Trigger from a webhook
• Manage other recipes
• Build recipe function
• Build an API endpoint
• Build a Slack bot command

You can configure when a trigger will occur in one of the following ways:

• Polled—The trigger event periodically checks for new events at regular intervals.
• Scheduled—The trigger event activates at a specified time or interval.

Certain triggers will have an icon indicator to the right of the name to let you know additional details, such as if it returns a single event versus a batch of events.

Actions

Actions are the events that occur after the trigger is activated. Each action has a variety of available input fields that can be used to best carry out the recipe’s objective.

You can add an action to a workflow in the recipe editor by clicking the Add (“   ”) icon under the trigger or previous action. From here, you can select the specific action type.

• Action steps
  • Action in app
  • Recipe function
• IF control statement
  • IF condition
• Repeat control statements (loops)
  • Repeat for each
  • Repeat while
• Stop control statement
  • Stop job
• Handle errors control statement
  • Handle errors

Conditions

A trigger can be customized to be even more granular by applying a condition—which consists of a data field, a condition, and a value—that contains an IF control statement. A job is then only run if the condition criteria is met.

An IF control statement is applied when there’s more than one possible outcome to an action. It analyzes every action and then stops it once the condition is met. The IF control sequence occurs as follows:

• IF—The initial condition is analyzed.
• ELSE IF—If the IF condition is false, the ELSE IF condition is analyzed next.
• ELSE—If the previous conditions aren’t met, the ELSE condition is processed.

In the example below, you’ll see that the condition ensures that the trigger only creates jobs when an updated object ID is 12345.

To create a trigger condition, scroll down to the bottom of the field list and toggle the Set trigger condition to ON. From here, you can specify the trigger data, condition, and value.

The available condition types include the following:

• Contains
• Doesn’t contain
• Starts with
• Ends with
• Doesn’t start with
• Doesn’t end with
• Equals
• Does not equal
• Greater than
• Less than
• Is true
• Is not true
• Is present
• Is not present

Kantata Connect sorts the conditions by the most recommended depending on the trigger data type that is selected.

To add an extra condition, click the Add (“   ”) icon at the bottom of the first condition modal in the side menu, and then select if you want it to be an AND or OR condition.

Tasks

A Task is a unit of work that occurs when a recipe performs any action that requires resources (i.e. actions using a connector, lookup tables, etc.). In other words, it’s a measurement of how much work is being done when a recipe runs a job. The amount of tasks that are consumed depends on how your recipe is configured.

Every Kantata Connect account has a monthly task limit. Your current task usage can be found at the top of each page in Kantata Connect.

Recipes are automatically stopped when the task limit is reached, resuming either when the task limit is increased or on the monthly renewal date. This is why it’s important to be mindful of your task usage as you build and run recipes.

There are various tools available to help you configure your recipes in a way that lowers how many tasks are used, such as conditional IF statements, formulas, filters, etc. The most recommended approach is to use a filter, which narrows down the amount of jobs processed in a recipe, thereby lowering the amount of any tasks that are consumed.

In the example below, you’ll see a recipe that will archive a Kantata OX project once the project status is updated to Completed. The recipe will then determine whether to log a message to the job report and stop—or archive—the project.

This example consumes more tasks than necessary because it is creating jobs for all created or updated project events when it only needs to focus on events where a project status is updated to Completed. To lower the task amount, you can apply a filter that will only create a job once a project status is changed to Completed, ignoring all other project updates.

Formulas

Formulas allow you to manually format your recipe data directly in trigger or action steps to better optimize your recipe’s task usage. By default, text mode is applied to your recipe input fields. To switch from text mode to formula mode in the side menu, select Formula above the input field on the far-right side.

From here, you can build your formulas by entering data for your inputs and functions. If needed, you can also select from the available formula options that appear below the field as you enter the data.

How to Create a Recipe

1. Log in to Kantata Connect.
2. In the Projects section on the left-hand section of the home page, select the Project where you would like to build your recipe.
3. In the top-right corner of the page, click the Create drop-down and then select Recipe.
4. On the Set up your recipe page, enter a recipe Name.
5. If desired, select a new Location—or Project—to create the recipe for.
   Note: When creating a recipe from a project, this field is automatically filled in with the project title.
6. Select a Starting point, or the event that triggers the workflow to begin.
   Note: The most common starting point used when creating a workflow is Trigger from an app.
7. Click Start Building. The recipe editor opens.
   
   
8. In the App tab, select an application the workflow will connect to. The Trigger tab opens.
   
9. In the Trigger tab, select a trigger event.
   
10. In the Connection tab, select an active connection.
    Note: If you haven’t set up a connection yet, click New Connection at the bottom of the section.
11. In the Setup tab, fill out all required fields to configure your trigger.
    
    Note: All required fields will have an asterisk next to the title.
12. Below the required trigger fields, fill out the object fields as desired.
    Note: To quickly sort through the object field options, use the Find option located at the top of the tab.
13. If you want to set a trigger condition, toggle Set trigger condition to ON at the bottom of the Setup subtab and then fill out the fields that appear. This can be done manually or by clicking and dragging datapills—which is output data from a previous trigger or action in this recipe—from the Recipe Data modal.
    Note: The object attribute names in the Recipe Data modal are sourced from our API. Please reference Kantata’s API documentation for more information.
14. To add an extra trigger condition, click the Add (“   ”) icon underneath the first trigger condition modal, and then select if you want it to be an AND or OR condition.
    Note: Select AND to require both of the conditions to be met in order for the recipe to proceed. Select OR to require only one.
15. Using the left side of the editor, add an action to the recipe by clicking the Add (“   ”) icon under the trigger and then selecting the desired action type:
    • Action in app
    • Recipe function
    • IF condition
    • Repeat for each
    • Repeat while
    • Stop job
    • Handle errors
16. On the left side of the editor, fill out the required fields for the action you selected, adding additional AND/OR conditions as needed.
    
17. In this example, there are two conditions that have been added. From here, click the Select an app and action button below the conditions pill on the left side and then select the application and subsequent action in the side menu.
18. Select the Object that the action will update.
    
    
19. Fill out the required—and optional as desired—fields that appear after you select the Object.
20. At the bottom of the tab, click the Show drop-down to display the available project fields and fill out as needed.
    
    
21. To add a stopping point to the recipe, add a Stop job action in the editor.
    
    
22. To add an explanatory comment to your actions, click the More (“   ”) icon to the right of each action and then select Add comment.
    
23. Click the Save button in the top-right corner of the editor to save the recipe.
24. In the top-right corner, click Test recipe to test your recipe’s configurations. The test runs and displays the results in the Test Jobs view.
25. To start the recipe, click the Exit button in the top-right corner to close the editor and then click the Start recipe button on the Recipe Details page.