WoodWing Connect: Connecting WoodWing Studio with Workato

Workato is an Enterprise-level automation platform service provider and offers an out-of-the-box way to quickly and easily connect and integrate with hundreds of business applications. 

The Workato service provides customers the ability to build 'Recipes' that connect disparate systems together. These Recipes use ‘Connectors' to connect to various systems such as WoodWing Studio.

Connectors encapsulate the APIs of the target system and provide user interface elements that help a person, who may not be a developer, to create these connections.

This article describes how to use the Studio Connector for connecting Workato with the WoodWing Studio system.

Connector components

A Connector will have 2 parts:

1. A Trigger which sets the Recipe in action.
2. An Action which is an action that can be performed within the Assets system.

Each is explained in detail below.

Triggers

Every recipe must have a ‘Trigger’.

Example:
A trigger could be waiting for a Webhook to be sent to it. A trigger could also be a polling operation that queries the source system every x minutes to see if there is any work to do.

It’s also important to note that Triggers can have ‘conditions’. For example, an event can be sent to a Recipe and the trigger can qualify the event by adding a condition such as ‘if the status equals 'New’, and then continue on with the recipe.

Within a Connector, the Trigger is responsible for the following:

1. Logging into the Studio system using a connection and creating a Webhook within the Studio system. The Webhook will then send data to the Recipe for processing. (To learn more about Studio and Webhooks, see Studio Server Webhook events and the Studio Server Web Services Guide - Webhooks.)
2. Deleting the Webhook from the Studio system when a recipe is stopped.

Triggers and Events

A Trigger corresponds with an actual EVENT that takes place in Studio. For instance, if a user creates a new layout in Studio then the recipe will receive a 'Created' Event from Studio Server via a Webhook that the recipe will create in Studio when the recipe is started. 

When configuring a Trigger you can choose to have one event serve as the trigger. 

The following is a complete list of the Events that are currently supported within the connector:

When configuring the Trigger the user interface for selecting the Event looks like the figure below.

Figure: Event Selection dialog within the Trigger configuration area of the connector

The selected Event is denoted by the blue checkmark and the event is also displayed at the top of the dialog. Note that there can be more than one Event for the trigger. 

Actions

Once the Recipe has received a Trigger event, the next steps are to act on the incoming Event.

For instance when an article is created we may want to export it to a service for further processing. To do that we first need to get the article from Studio Server. The process of retrieving the article will consist of several Actions linked together to get the desired result.

The Actions in the Studio Connector are divided into 'Workflow' and 'Admin' areas, just like the API documentation.

The Actions appear in the Connector when a user creates an Action in the recipe and then selects the connector.  In the figure below a subset of the Actions are visible on the right side of the image.

Below is a list of available Actions by area: 

Workflow Actions

1. Abort Checkout objects
2. Assign dossier labels
3. Assign objects to targets
4. Copy Object
5. Create InDesign Server Job (Requires the Connect Automate Server Plugin)
   1. Requires Connect Automate
6. Create dossier
7. Create Layout PDF
   1. Requires Connect Automate
8. Create Object
   
   1. Note: When creating a 'Task' object that by setting the 'Mime Type' field and the 'File Content' filed to 'blank' you can avoid the 'required' requirement. Only do this when creating 'Task' objects.
9. Create object from template
10. Create object label
11. Create object operation
12. Create object relation
13. Delete object relation
14. Download file from URL
15. Get Brands
16. Get extension map
17. Get object
18. Get object template
19. Get workflow status
20. Lock objects
21. Move object to Trash can
22. Remove dossier labels
23. Restore object
24. Restore version
25. Save object
26. Search object
27. Send to
28. Send to Next
29. Update object properties
30. Update object relations

Administration Actions

1. Copy Brand
2. Create Issue
3. Copy Issue
4. Delete Issue
5. Get Issues
6. Create Publication Channel
7. Get Publication Channel
8. Update Publication Channel
9. Delete Publication Channel
10. Create Edition
11. Get Edition
12. Update Edition
13. Delete Edition
14. Create Category
15. Get Category
16. Update Category 
17. Delete Category

Introductory Video

This short video will give an idea of the use of the Studio connector within a recipe.

Notes

¹ As part of the purchase of WoodWing Connect, the customer is provided with an API License for WoodWing Assets and 2 licenses for WoodWing Studio: an API license and a Planning API license. Additional licenses can be purchased.

² Task usage is subject to fair use. Task overage will be evaluated for next year.