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Automation

To support enterprises, the Retool Platform provides two different ways to manage development teams via automation. Either of these options is recommended versus manually ("ClickOps") configuring Retool to onboard a new team.

Automation options​

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) provides organizations a software definition that automates repeatable operations. The following two options are currently supported.

Retool Events + Retool Workflows + Retool API​

The first automation is leverage Retool Events that initiates a Retool Workflow. The Retool Workflow then calls the Retool API to create the necessary objects for a team onboarding. Learn more about events + workflows. In addition a hands-on lab is available to automate group membership and can be found here.

Retool Terraform Provider​

An alternative mechansim for automation is the use of the Retool Terraform Provider. Using a Terraform definition source control, groups, spaces, folders and permissions can be defined. The following provides an example of the terraform file.

provider "retool" {
  host         = "your-retool-instance.com"
  scheme       = "https"
  access_token = "your-access-token"
}


# Create an app folder
resource "retool_folder" "production_apps" {
  name        = "Production Apps"
  folder_type = "app"
}

# Create a permission group
resource "retool_group" "production_apps_users" {
  name = "Production Apps Users"
}

# Grant "use" permissions on the folder to the permission group
resource "retool_permissions" "production_apps_users" {
  subject = {
    type = "group"
    id   = retool_group.production_apps_users.id
  }
  permissions = [
    {
      object = {
        type = "folder"
        id   = retool_folder.production_apps.id
      }
      access_level = "use"
    }
  ]
}

What to automate​

Prior to implementing an automated action, the team will need to identify what a team requires but the most common options include the following:

  • Space
    • Single Sign On (SSO) Provider
    • Source Code Management Provider (Git-based)
    • Group(s)
    • User(s)
    • Folder(s)

Visually we can more easily see the connections and relationships.

Team Space