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Changelog

Updates, changes, and improvements at Retool.

Retool can record user behavior and interactions with apps using Fullstory. When enabled, data about user interactions with apps are reported directly to Fullstory for you to review in detail. You can then analyze app analytics, evaluate impact, and review interactions with session replay. This integration is useful for monitoring user activity across different apps, and using advanced analytical tools like heatmaps and funnels to identify usage patterns, debug errors, and improve the overall user experience.

If your organization uses Source Control, Retool sometimes creates an automatic commit, called a catch-up commit, which keeps your branches up to date. If you want to ensure that developers in your organization retain complete control of changes within their feature branches, you can now disable catch-up commits using the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Settings > Source Control and click the Edit Settings button on the top right.
  2. Toggle on the Disable auto catch up commits setting.

If you disable catch-up commits, users in your organization must manually, outside of Retool, rebase their branch and resolve conflicts in order to keep their branch up to date.

To avoid issues with catch-up commits and other merge control mechanisms, refer to Retool's Merge conflict prevention strategies.

Multi-step functions are now generally available in Retool Workflows on Retool Cloud and on self-hosted organizations. They operate as self-contained workflows with optional parameters.

Multi-step functions improve the Workflows experience in several key areas:

  • Isolating complex operations with many steps.
  • Enabling nested looping, replacing the need for multiple subsequent Loop blocks operating on the same piece of data.
  • Eliminating the need to call a workflow from within another, therefore decreasing the number of billable workflow runs.
  • Enabling builders to reuse blocks of code within a single workflow.

Existing users of functions can continue using their functions as normal. Functions that were created previous to this release are now treated as single-step functions.

You can now connect your organization to Sentry and Datadog for workflow error monitoring and event logging.

To set up error reporting, go to the Settings and navigate to Configuration > Observability. Enter your Sentry and Datadog credentials to emit workflow errors and run events to either or both providers.

Connecting to external observability providers is especially useful for your organization if:

  • You have a high volume of workflow runs that your organization would prefer to monitor systematically, outside of the workflows run panel UI.
  • Your organization is on Retool Cloud and you want to retain a record of workflow run events beyond the 90 day retention period.

Retool updated the Export to Module feature for usability improvements. This feature allows you to select components on the canvas and “refactor” them into a module.

The following key changes were made:

  • You can now export a single component to a module. For example, you could export a single container (and all its children) to a module.
  • When making the export, all the related logic, such as queries, variables, and transformers, is automatically included in the exported module. This eliminates the need to manually copy logic to the module.
  • Once the export is complete, Retool automatically replaces the selection with the newly created module. This eliminates the need to import the module after you export the selection.

Access Export to Module in one of the following ways:

  • Select one or multiple components, right-click, and select Export to module.
  • Select multiple components and click in the Inspector.

When publishing your workflows, you can now choose to publish any changes to child workflows. This update streamlines workflow publishing by eliminating the need to manage releases separately. If you make a change to a referenced workflow, these changes are automatically detected when publishing the parent.

Retool recently made a series of improvements to the Run panel and other mechanisms that are commonly used to debug workflows. These changes include:

  • Added filtering historical runs based on timestamp and workflow run ID in the Run panel.
  • Added searching logs by block name in the Run panel.
  • Added filtering blocks by type in the Run panel.
  • Moved the Use as Example JSON button to the top of the Data tab.
  • Added the ability to download JSON data from the JSON tab of block outpus or from the JSON tab of the Run panel.
  • Added workflowRunContext to the Input tab of block outputs.
  • Added endedAtEpochMs to workflowRunContext in the Input tab of block outputs.

To take advantage of these improvements, use the following best practices:

  • Be sure to reference the workflow Run ID and the time that the workflow concluded in the body of your global error handler with workflowContext.currentRun.workflowRunId and workflowContext.lastRun.endedAtEpochMs. You can also emit both properties by default by connecting your Retool organization to Datadoog or Sentry. Having the workflowRunId and timestamp handy at debug time will allow you to quickly filter workflow runs to the errored workflow run.
  • Name all of your blocks descriptively to make them easy to search for in the run panel.
  • Reproduce workflow errors manually by using copied block JSON from the run panel as an input to downstream blocks.

Retool no longer requires NsJail to use custom JavaScript libraries and custom Python libraries in workflows on Self-hosted Retool. If your team is unable to grant privileged container access, this change enables you to still use custom libraries.

While no longer required, Retool still strongly recommends using NsJail with privileged container access, as it provides sandboxing and remains the most secure option.