Workato Naming Convention Best Practices
Maintaining a standard naming convention in Workato is a key factor in ensuring an organized workspace and easy asset retrieval. Although each Workato instance may have unique characteristics, establishing rules and adhering to general best practices in naming conventions is a solid starting point that can be customized as needed.
Naming Convention Example
[MK]-MITF-FCT-03 > Update Lead in Marketo
How The Naming Convention Works:
There are five essential components to the naming convention:
- Department
- Project ID
- Asset ID
- Order ID
- Description
Department
This is the two letter ID that is in brackets like [MK] in the example above. This will make it easy to find recipes and other assets that belong to a specific department. A two letter ID should suffice for most organizations. Here is an example:
| Department ID | Department Name |
|---|---|
| CS | Customer Service |
| FI | Finance/Accounting |
| GN | General |
| HR | Human Resources |
| IT | Information Technology |
| LG | Legal |
| MK | Marketing |
| SC | Supply Chain |
| SL | Sales |
Project ID
Most recipes are part of a larger project with additional recipes and connections, this four letter ID will help group these together. Using the example above, I could search Workato for ‘-MITF-’ and all of the assets that have that string will appear. In my example, MITF stands for Marketo Instance Transfer Flow. You should have documentation around which IDs are in use so that you don’t use the same ID for a different project. For instance, if we create a new project named Marketo Initiate Trial Flow, I may use something like MTRF or MTRL instead.
Asset ID
The asset ID will help contain information about whether something is a trigger, webhook, function, connection etc. While you can use the Workato dashboard and/or API to get this information, I find it is valuable to have in the naming contention as well. If I want to see all recipes that are triggered by a webhook I can search for ‘-WBH-’. Here is a table with some suggestions:
| Asset ID | Asset Name |
|---|---|
| API | API recipe |
| APP | Workato APP |
| BOT | Workbot |
| CDM | Common Data Model |
| CON | Connector |
| FCT | Function recipe |
| FIL | File Storage |
| FLD | Folder |
| MOR | Manage other recipes |
| MSG | Message templates |
| PAG | Page |
| PSB | PubSub |
| RLM | Recipe Lifecycle Management |
| SCH | Scheduled recipe |
| SLK | Slack recipe |
| TBL | Data Table |
| TRG | Triggered by App |
| WBH | Webhook recipe |
Order ID
I find establishing order in a group of recipes is also important to understand their place as data passes from one system to another. In my example above, the recipe is the third step in the process and is the function where we update the lead. Step ‘04’ may be a separate function where we are adding someone to a program in Marketo.
While your setup may not have a similar workflow, you can still use the steps to contain the order in which the recipes were created. Having this step ID will help keep things tidy and easy to read.
Description
The final piece to the naming convention is the description. I like to separate this from the recipe with a ‘>’ symbol as I find it easier to read but you could also use hyphens, underscores, or pipes. This is free text to explain what the recipe does. In my example, it updates the lead in Marketo.
Adopting a proper naming convention, alongside an effective project and folder structure, simplifies navigation in Workato for all users.
Naming Convention Document
For a handy tool, you can use this Google Sheet with a formula and lookup value to create and maintain your naming conventions.
