WoodWing Connect - Introduction

WoodWing Connect is WoodWing's umbrella term for a bundle of integration technologies, licenses and tools. The options empower our partners and customers to create a best-of-breed solutions, and helps them optimize their content creation processes.

WoodWing Connect goes beyond APIs and webhooks. It also encompasses integration options with hundreds of applications through a best-in-class Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solution, vastly extending the connectivity of our core applications, WoodWing Assets, WoodWing Studio and WoodWing Swivle.

What does WoodWing Connect include?

Connect includes a variety of technologies, licenses and tools, all bundled together. Included with the bundle are the following items:

1. For our WoodWing Cloud customers that are on our new February 2024 pricing Connect is part of that pricing model. As part of that new model Connect offers access to a selection Pre-Built integrations as paid add-ons to Connect.
2. For those WoodWing Cloud customers on pre-February 2024 pricing WoodWing offers a variety of plans to access the capabilities of Connect and Pre-Built Integrations are paid add-ons.
3. Pre-built integrations are not available to customers who are not in the WoodWing Cloud.
4. Regardless of the how access to Connect is purchased an account for WoodWing Connect powered by Workato, along with the WoodWing connectors for WoodWing Assets or WoodWing Swivle and WoodWing Studio.
5. An API License for WoodWing Assets or WoodWing Swivle, WoodWing Studio and the Planning API License.

For a full list of benefits available with WoodWing Connect, see Available plans. 

WoodWing Connect powered by Workato

Workato is an Enterprise-level automation platform service provider. This is also referred to as an 'Integration platform as a Service' or 'IPaaS' system. Workato offers an out-of-the-box way to quickly and easily connect and integrate with hundreds of business applications. Through our partnership, WoodWing Connect offers access to the tools provided by Workato.

Workato has 6 very important terms that it uses to define aspects of the system. These terms include:

1. Recipes
2. Connectors
3. Triggers
4. Actions
5. Tasks
6. Jobs

Each is explained in the following sections.

1. Recipes

The Workato service provides customers the ability to build 'recipes' that connect disparate systems together. Recipes are the result of grouping together Triggers (generally from Connectors) and Actions to create a set of steps that the Workato tool uses to create connections between systems and to perform work.

This is what a recipe could look like:

2. Connectors

Recipes use ‘Connectors' to connect to various systems. System connectors like those for WoodWing’s Studio, Assets and Swivle system encapsulate the APIs of the target system and provide user interface elements that help a person, who is not a developer, to create these connections. There are also generic connectors like the HTTP connector that allow a user to create connections without having a specific system connector.

In the case of WoodWing, we provide three connectors as part of WoodWing Connect: one for WoodWing Assets, one for WoodWing Swivle and one for WoodWing Studio.

3. Triggers

Every recipe must have a ‘Trigger’.

For 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.

4. Actions

Actions are steps in the recipes after the trigger, that do the actual work. These actions include things like looping through data, creating variables, logging into another system and other items.

So, a recipe is triggered by the receipt of a webhook from the source system or by polling the source system. If the triggers conditions are met the recipe will walk through the defined actions. Certain kinds of ‘Actions’ will up the count of ‘Tasks’ within the Workato account. For example, logging into a another system will count as a ‘Task’ within Workato.

5. Tasks

Tasks are particular Actions within a recipe that act as a counter within a recipe. A recipe can be triggered by an event, process data, and then update another system. In general, a request for work into another system is a ‘task’. A more thorough definition can be found on the Workato site.

6. Jobs

A job is recorded whenever a recipe is triggered. Each job is unique and the job retains all the data for each run of the recipe. Jobs also keep all error information for any action within the recipe.

WoodWing licenses

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