Store data in a Table

Key Concepts

• Create a Table
• Add data to a Table

Autogenerated Transcript

Welcome back to Catalytic the last couple of videos have been based around the first three core Workflow patterns of approvals, routing and notifications, gathering data with web forms, and then creating documents and spreadsheets.

The next series of videos will focus on the next Workflow pattern of processing data.

And lastly, we’ll discuss working with web API’s.

If you’ve been following along then you should feel comfortable building a basic Workflow or process.

And now we’re going to introduce data elements and discuss how we can use manipulate and transform data within Catalytic in the next couple of videos.

Catalytic can process structured data in common formats such as CSV and Excel files, but we’re going to be focusing specifically on data tables.

For now.

A data table is a table or self serving spreadsheet or database depending on what you want to call it that exists within Catalytic.

These tables have specific actions that they can be used with might offer more functionality than processing CSV or Excel files using actions.

However, you can easily convert between these formats using our no code actions as well.

This type of pattern will be covered later on.

In order to find all of your data tables in your instance that you have access to, you can click on the nine dots square in the top right and navigate to the Data section.

This will show you all of the tables that you have permissions to view within your instance of Catalytic.

Let’s go ahead and click into one just to see what it looks like.

As you can tell, the table looks like a spreadsheet and it acts like one two, we can click into any of these cells and edit the values or we can click on Add a row at the bottom in order to add another row to our table.

Now that we know what a data table looks like, let’s go over how to actually create them.

There are a couple ways to go about this, you can either import a data set, create a blank table manually or use Workflow actions.

To manually create a table, we just have to navigate back to our data tables tab.

And then click on create a data table in the top right.

This will show a configuration pop up and all that’s required is the name of the table.

We also have the ability to upload a spreadsheet to pre populate the table.

But we’ll get to that in the next video, we can also control the permission.

So who is able to view and edit this table.

I’m going to make a new table just as an example.

We’re not going to be using it in any of our Workflows for this video.

So I’m just going to go ahead and give it the name of placeholder and we’ll hit Create to create our table.

We then go out to our actual table which has no columns and is completely empty at the moment.

If we still want it to upload a spreadsheet, we can do so here by clicking on Add data from file.

But let’s just go ahead and add some columns to show how to configure a table.

Clicking Add a column will show a configuration pop up which is really similar to how we set up form fields.

I’m gonna go ahead and give the column a name.

Again, this is just an example.

So I’m going to just call it field one and keep it as short text.

If we keep scrolling down, though, you can see that all of these different fields we can fill out are again really similar to the ones that you fill out when you’re setting up your form fields in your Workflow.

But I’m just going to go ahead and fill out the display name and keep the rest blank.

And I’ll hit Save.

And then we’ll see that that column was added to our table.

I’ll go ahead and add another field.

And to do that, we just click on the ellipses in the top right here, which will show all the different settings we have for our table.

So I’m just going to click on add a column, I’ll just call it field two.

So we’re keeping this pretty simple.

And I’ll make that a date type.

Now that we’ve added some columns to a table, we’re going to go over how to add data.

clicking on Add a row will add a blank row to our table, you can click into any of the cells to edit that value.

Or if you go ahead and click on this open arrow, it’ll open a pop up that will let you edit all the fields for that given row.

So made field to a date to show that depending on your column configuration, the type of data that can store can be limited or defined to a specific type.

So for example, if you’re storing dates in a table, you’ll probably want the column to be a date type.

I’m just going to exit out of this pop up and you’ll see that the edits that we made in that pop up actually did change the values in our vote.

And to remove this row, we can right click and just click on Remove row.

And easy enough that is how we can delete that row of data.

So this is how we can create a table manually.

But now let’s hop into our Workflow section and make a new float so that way we can go over the actions that allow you to create a table and add data.

I’m going to go ahead and make a new Workflow, one from scratch.

And I’m just going to go ahead and call it CREATE TABLE and add a vote since those are the actions that we’ll be using for this example.

I believe the description and the rest of the fields blank, but feel free to fill those out if you want.

So let’s go ahead and create our flow.

I won’t be adding a trigger.

So before we add our first action into our Workflow, let’s first set up some form fields, we can input information that we’re going to add to a table, I’m just going to add two fields, both short text, one called email and the other mailing address.

So I’ll go through this fairly quickly.

There’s our first field for email.

And our second one for mailing address.

So all this Workflow is going to do is create an empty data table and then add a new row with the information we submitted when we start a new instance.

So I’m just going to go ahead and describe that first part and add a step.

So we’re going to create an empty data table.

Catalytic grabbed the correct step.

And all we have to do now is configure the columns, we don’t have to give this table a name, and I’ll explain why in a bit.

So I’m just going to go ahead and name the columns the same as our form fields.

And then we’re just going to in order to find what type the column is, you can click on this little information bubble to see what types are allowed.

So I’m just going to make sure that they are both text.

Okay, so now that we have our step configured, let’s go ahead and save it and then add our next step.

So next, we just have to input that information as a new row in our table.

So let’s go ahead and describe that process, add a row to table.

So now we just have to configure this step that will add a new vote, we’re going to go ahead and select that empty table we created by choosing via field and we’ll find that empty data table created in our drop down here.

As a side note, in case you get confused as to what the name of that output of the create an empty data table step is, you can go ahead and expand the fields on the right side to make sure that you’re referencing the correct table.

If you select the other options from the drop down, for example, use table by name, you’ll notice that it shows you all the tables that exist in your data tab.

That’s because the empty table that’s being created in our Workflow really only exists within this Workflow.

Whereas a table in the Data tab can be accessed or referenced at any time.

This instance table as I like to call, it will still have a unique ID, but won’t be able to be found in the Data tab with the rest of our data tables.

Because again, it only exists in the instance of this Workflow.

We selected our field and now we’re just going to go ahead and add our column names, we’re going to do this manually.

If we selected a table that already exists in the Data tab, then the column names would appear in this drop down.

If we selected use column by name.

Otherwise, we’re just going to go ahead and list out the columns that we want to add data to our table.

So we’re just going to go ahead and list out those columns.

And now we just have to define the fields that we want to use to populate the new bow on this table.

This is just selecting the correct field references in the same respective order as our columns.

These can be copied from the global Fields tab on the right side.

Or we can use the double handlebar reference and type out the name to have a drop down appear which will show us all of the fields that are available for us to reference, whichever is easiest for you.

And that’s everything that we need to configure for our add a row step.

So let’s go ahead and save it.

So now let’s just go ahead and test our Workflow.

I’m just going to fill it out with my email and Catalytics mailing address and we’ll go ahead and start it.

This Workflow is going to end pretty quickly but if we click into the create an empty data table step, we can see the table that was created and the information submitted was added thanks to that add a row step.

This video is just a simple walkthrough of data tables and how you can create them manually via the Data tab as well as how you can create an add data to them using a Workflow.

In our next video, we’ll go over how to use some other table actions in a Workflow, such as looking up data in a column and updating a row.

Thanks for tuning in.