Understanding usage: Workflows (recipes)

Workflow (recipe) usage is calculated in Business actions, which are measured based on the triggers and action steps within a recipe. Not all steps within a recipe automatically count as Business actions.

Usage calculation rules

Workflow recipe usage calculations follow the general usage calculation rules, where successfully executed steps count towards usage and failed actions are excluded.

Workato uses the following additional rules to calculate Business actions:

• Business actions are measured based on triggers and actions in an app steps in the recipe. Other recipe steps, including conditional statements, monitoring blocks, and more, don't count as Business actions.
• Not all actions in an app count as Business actions. Refer to the following lists of eligible and ineligible apps to understand which apps are eligible for inclusion in usage calculations:

Eligible apps

• All third party app connectors (for example, Workday, Salesforce, Slack, Databricks, and more)
• Community connectors
• AI by Workato
• EDI Tools by Workato
• Email by Workato
• FTP/FTPS and FTP/FTPS secondary
• HTTP and HTTP secondary
• JavaScript Snippets by Workato
• JDBC and JDBC Secondary
• JMS tools by Workato
• On-prem command-line script
• On-prem files and On-prem files secondary
• Python Snippets by Workato
• RPA by Workato
• Ruby Snippets by Workato
• SFTP and SFTP secondary
• SMB
• SMS by Workato
• Syslog
• CSV Tools by Workato
• File Tools by Workato
• JSON Tools by Workato
• SQL Collection
• SQL Transformation
• XML Tools by Workato
• Workato Knowledge Storage

Ineligible apps

• API Platform by Workato
• Callable Recipes by Workato
• JWT Tools by Workato
• Logger by Workato
• Lookup Tables by Workato
• Mapper by Workato
• Message Template by Workato
• PGP Tools by Workato
• People Task by Workato
• Recipe Function by Workato
• RecipeOps by Workato
• Scheduler by Workato
• Variables by Workato
• Workato Data Tables
• Workato FileStorage
• Workflow apps by Workato
• YAML Tools by Workato

Usage counting

The total Business action usage of a workflow recipe job is the sum of all eligible steps. If a recipe involves IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) or Event streams capabilities, Pages processed or Events processed is calculated in addition to Business actions.

Example usage calculations

The following examples demonstrate how Workato calculates usage for different types of workflow recipes:

Recipe with trigger from Workato utility connector

Recipe with trigger from Workato utility connector

The trigger doesn't count as a Business action because it doesn't use an eligible app. However, all action in an app steps in this recipe use eligible apps and count as Business actions.

Usage totals

• Business actions: 3 (Step 2, 3, and 4)
• Total usage per job: 3 Business actions

Recipe with trigger from third party app

Recipe with trigger from third party app

All eligible steps (the trigger and action in an app steps) use eligible apps, so all steps count as Business actions.

Usage totals

• Business actions: 3 (Step 1, 2, and 3)
• Total usage per job: 3 Business actions

Recipe with conditionals and control flows

Recipe with conditionals and control flows

IF conditions don't count as Business actions. However, the steps nested within an IF condition path contribute to Business actions. The steps are only counted if the condition resolves to true and the path is executed.

In this example, the number of Business actions varies based on whether the recipe data meets the IF condition.

Usage totals

• Business actions: 4 or 5 (Step 1, 2, 4, and 5 or Step 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7)
• Total usage per job: 4 or 5 Business actions

Recipe with loop

Recipe with loop

Repeat for each or repeat while loops don't count as Business actions. However, the steps within loops contribute to Business actions if they meet the usage calculation rules for workflow recipes. The usage within the loop is calculated as the sum of Business actions across all executions of the loop.

For example, if the CSV file in this recipe has 10 rows, the loop is executed 10 times and the total usage is 21 Business actions (1+(2*10)).

Usage totals

• Business actions: (1 + (2*{N})), where {N} is the number of times the loop executes.
• Total usage per job: Variable

Recipe with failed actions

Recipe with failed step

Failed steps don't count as Business actions. Thus, the failed Create Sales order in NetSuite action (Step 4) doesn't count as a Business action.

If this recipe runs and all actions complete successfully, then the total Business actions is 3. However, if this recipe runs and Step 3 fails both on the initial run and when retried, the total Business actions is 4.

Usage totals

• Business actions: 4 (Step 1, 3, and 6)
• Total usage per job: 4 Business actions