General questions about working with 'Capture webhook response' for a workflow that is being used in production

[Ivan Arnaudov]

My questions are not about a specific workflow; I am looking for advice about how to work with webhook triggers in general in specific circumstances.

Imagine a situation where I might need to rework the contents of a workflow based on new or additional data that I will begin sending via the webhook. While I am doing this, the workflow itself is active and receives data regularly, and it must continue to do so until I have implemented and tested the change.

In order to map the extra bits of data to new parts of the workflow, I need to capture a response. The problem with doing this on a live automation is that this puts me in a race against real-life users to generate an event that triggers the workflow (think a Woocommerce order, for example).

If I press the 'Capture workflow' button and somebody else finalizes their order the next moment, their action will get stuck in the design screen of the workflow instead of triggering the automation, which is... bad.

Because of this, I am forced to do such operations very late in the evening in order to reduce the chances of creating such race conditions or even put the website in a brief 'Under maintenance' window.

I wonder if there is a better way to do this, short of cloning the workflow and duplicating webhook send events?

For example, is there a way to 'release' the wrongly captured webhook data and to make Pabbly Connect re-execute the whole workflow, short of trying to reproduce the whole request in Postman or Insomnia and resend it to the webhook?

Another problem with the existing process is that if I press the 'Capture workflow' button, I become committed; no matter what I do, the next event which posts data to that webhook will be captured. If, for whatever reason, I then have to stop working (personal emergency, fire in the building or whatever), I have no way of reverting that procedure. Is there a way to cancel a 'Capture workflow' action short of sending a dummy POST request to the webhook?

Ideally, I would want to have two buttons next to the 'Capture workflow' button:
- a button that says 'Cancel request', and
- a button that says 'Pass captured data for workflow execution'

I am planning to write a feature request about this, but before I proceed to do so, I would like to hear from the Pabbly team and/or other experienced users if there is something I have missed that actually allows me to do that.

Many thanks to whoever viewed my question and engaged in the discussion.

 

[Supreme]

Hey @Ivan Arnaudov

Presently, the cancel button is not available in the webhook-type triggers. However, if you are using the Webhook by Pabbly trigger event, you have the option to choose from multiple webhook responses generated during your recent executions, which are accessible in your history logs.

Select Trigger Response

In complex workflows, it is common to come across scenarios where a single trigger response does not contain all the required mappable fields. This limitation poses a challenge when configuring the workflow accurately. However, by utilizing the capability to capture and utilize multiple trigger...

forum.pabbly.com

 

[Ivan Arnaudov]

Hey @Ivan Arnaudov
However, if you are using the Webhook by Pabbly trigger event, you have the option to choose from multiple webhook responses generated during your recent executions, which are accessible in your history logs.

Select Trigger Response

In complex workflows, it is common to come across scenarios where a single trigger response does not contain all the required mappable fields. This limitation poses a challenge when configuring the workflow accurately. However, by utilizing the capability to capture and utilize multiple trigger...

forum.pabbly.com

I am aware of this functionality and it is very convenient recent addition to Pabbly Connect but it does not solve my problem (and it is not only my problem, it is a general problem when updating an existing workflow that is under use).

My issue is that if I can't cancel the 'Capture response', it becomes my responsibility to react if Pabbly Connect captures a valid webhook request because otherwise that will be held and not executed.

 

[Supreme]

We can only recommend you recapture the webhook response again and post the request to add the cancel webhook response button here - https://pabbly.featureos.app/b/Feature-Request

 

[Ivan Arnaudov]

We can only recommend you recapture the webhook response again and post the request to add the cancel webhook response button here - https://pabbly.featureos.app/b/Feature-Request

Thank you, this is what I will do. I wanted to make sure there isn't an elegant workaround but since you have confirmed it, I will create a Feature Request where I will try to explain in detail the use case of such feature. Much appreciate your comments!