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Lab 0 - Automating Retool

Goal​

Enterprises that adopt Retool look to automate as much as they can to create consistent onboarding / offboarding experiences. The following lab will focus on using the Retool API and Workflows to demonstrate one automation option.

The following steps require having Administrator permissions. If you do not have these please work with your admin contact.

Instructor creates Retool API Token​

  • Go to Settings > Retool API > Create new.
  • Create a token with the name onboarding_class_token and scope of Users Read and Users Write.
  • Select Create token.
Create API Token
  • This will display the token.
View API Token
  • Copy the token and move to the next section.

Instructor creates a configuration variable​

  • Go to Settings > Configuration Variables.
  • Specify the name onboarding_class_config_var, a description, enable Mark variable as secret, and for Values specify a production value equal to the previous access token.
  • Select Save Changes.
Create Configuration Variable
  • Configuration variables are then displayed as shown below. To access this configuration variable, we will employ the use of {{environment.variables.NAME}}.
View Configuration Variable

Instructor creates a Resource using configuration variable​

  • Go to Resource > Create new > Folder and create a folder called Students.
  • Create a resource now by selecting Create new > Resource > REST API
  • Provide a name of List Users using Retool API
  • Update the URL to use the following value (e.g. enablement.retool.com, partners.retool.com):
    • https://(your retool domain)/api/v2/
  • Update the authentication to use a token and specify the value using the configuration variable.
    • {{ environment.variables.onboarding_class_config_var }}
List Users Resource

Instructor adds Resource to Permission Group​

  • Go to Settings > Groups
  • Create a group called Students.
  • Edit the Student Permission Group and add the newly created Resource with Edit access.
Permission Group

As the admin you will need to add members/students to the group to provide them these permissions. If testing as the admin, you will have access to the resource by default.

Create User Workflow​

  • Go to Workflows > Folder > (your_name)_workflows.
  • Select the folder by clicking on the card. This will place you in the folder.
  • Select Create new > Workflow
  • Rename the workflow, user-mgmt-workflow.
  • Delete the code block by selecting the ... in the upper-right corner of the code1 block. Select Delete / Delete
  • Select the circle on the right-hand side of the startTrigger block to add a block. Select Resource query and place to the right of the startTrigger block
  • Rename the block listUsers and select the List Users using Retool API resource.
  • Update the path to include users to get user details from the Retool API.
List Users
  • To get a specific user we create another block.
  • Name the resource query block, getUser.
  • Update the URI portion to identify the user id. {{ listUsers.data.data[0].id}}
Get User
  • To create a user, we create another block, named createUser.
  • Change the Method to POST
  • Update the url to add users.
  • Specify Headers Content-type = application/json and Accept = application/json
  • Specify RAW for the body and copy and paste the following:
{
  "email": "<yourfirstname>@example.com",
  "first_name": "<yourfirstname>",
  "last_name": "Simple",
  "active": true,
  "metadata": {},
  "user_type": "default"
}

Review your configuration with the image below.

Create User

Test User Workflow​

Now let's test the three blocks running together.

  • Select Run to execute the workflow.
  • This will display the History panel and identify the tasks that completed.
  • Select listUsers, getUser, and createUser to view the output of each of these steps.
Workflow History