DronaHQ has a feature to automate your tasks on certain trigger events which could be scheduled timings or using a webhook from a third-party service; called as Automation.
When you are creating different apps in DronaHQ Studio you might have come across scenarios where you have certain repetitive tasks like triggering an email when a new product is added or meeting reminder emails to the sales team and so on. The platform offers different functionalities like creating automation to simplify repetitive processes and schedule your activities.
Automations on Studio
Version 2 of Automation is a feature to automate repetitive tasks. Automation v2 is now with an improved experience and a far more powerful engine to do a lot more efficiently.
The process is simple, you define an event that will trigger the repetitive task and then define the workflow for the necessary tasks.
You can find Automations on the left-side navigation bar on your Studio homepage.
You can see the Automations dashboard where all your automations are listed.
Listed Automation
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Name: Showcases the names of all the automations that have been created so far.
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Trigger: Tell you what type of trigger is selected for the respective automation. It can be either Scheduler or Webhook.
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Status: Info about whether the automation is enabled or not at the moment.
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: This provides you with options to enable/disable, delete and copy the automation.
Create New Automation – On Studio
Now if you want to create a new one, click +Automation.
Provide a name for your automation.
A new window to configure automation will open. With sidebar to Select a Trigger.
There are two steps in the automation process, first, define Select A Trigger i.e. the trigger for the automation, and the second one is Select Task or Connector I.e. the actions to be executed on the trigger.
Select A Trigger
There are two types of automation triggers available to select from:
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Scheduler: The scheduler-based automation involves action flows or workflows that are scheduled to be repeated at a particular time like daily at a stipulated time, on specific days of every week, monthly, or yearly.
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Webhook: The webhook-based automation is useful to get notified whenever an event occurs in a third-party service. Automations now provide webhooks REST API, which can be registered to an external service and get notified in the event of change happening there. This in turn can be used to trigger an action.
Select Task or Connector
After selecting a trigger for your automation, you would require to add all sorts of actions which one can by clicking the + sign to add a task or connector.
Based on the type of trigger you need to define the task or the connector to be executed. Add the tasks from the available list and configure the task depending upon the type of trigger you have chosen.
Automation – Preview & Publish & Roll Back
Preview – Play the automation
Click on the Preview/Play button on the top and this will execute the automation
Test the automation and you will see RUN LOGS popped out from below to check the whole running status of the workflow.
LOGS:
The Logs enable users to analyze the whole automation with the date/ time and running statuses of each task present in the whole automation.
One can check the details of the errors if found while running the automation. It also shows success and failure for connector calls.
One can also view the information of the payload if provided (for webhook-based automation).
Publish the automation
After you are satisfied with the setting and the test results you can publish the automation by clicking PUBLISH
Now for the automation to be triggered as planned and available to be used, you need to make sure that the automation is Enabled . Toggle on or off to set the Automation status .
Drafts – Versions of Automation
One can view all the published versions of the automation workflow from the drafts/versions dropdown.
The Drafts of automation enable us to roll back to any version of the automation at any point in time provided that the version should be published distinctively published earlier. To roll back, simply click on the arrow under the Roll Back’ column.
Running Individual Task
Instead of executing the whole automation flow, you can check a task by individually playing it. Simply click on the play icon on the task and it will execute that particular task and provide you with the request. Response and output on success.
NOTE: in case of a dependency from one task to another then, executing an individual task will throw an error if the previous task is not executed prior, since it provides an output of the previous as input of the next task. In this case, we should run the previous task individually before running this task individually.
