Optimize Your Data Workflows with Flows

Introduction to Flows in Keboola

Data workflows can quickly become complex and difficult to manage, especially as your organization scales. Keboola's flows feature enables businesses to streamline, automate, and optimize their data processes, significantly improving efficiency and accuracy. This comprehensive guide covers best practices for effectively implementing flows in your Keboola environment. You'll learn how to set up notifications, configure triggers, utilize variables, and more.

Why Use Flows?

• Enhanced Visibility: Flows provide transparency to your data processes, allowing quicker identification and resolution of any issues.
• Improved Automation: Automate repetitive tasks, saving valuable time and resources.
• Higher Productivity: Simplify complex workflows, enabling your team to focus on strategic tasks.

Setting Up Flow Notifications

Notifications are crucial for maintaining visibility and accountability. Keboola recommends configuring notifications not only via email but also through group chat platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams. To achieve this, generate an email address for your selected chat channel and configure the flow notifications accordingly. This ensures your entire team stays informed in real-time, improving response times and issue management.

Example: If a flow encounters an error, your Slack channel immediately receives an alert, allowing the responsible team member to quickly intervene.

Types of Flows: Scheduled vs Event-Triggered

1. Scheduled Flows: These flows run at predefined intervals (e.g., daily, weekly). Ideal for regular data processing tasks.
2. Event-Triggered Flows: Automatically activate when a specific event occurs, such as data changes within a table. This ensures immediate data processing and updates.

To set up an event-triggered flow, simply navigate to the 'Set Schedule' section, select 'Triggered', and specify the table to monitor. Define how often the system checks the table (e.g., every 5 minutes) and confirm the trigger setup. If multiple tables are added, the flow activates only after all specified tables have updates, acting as a logical AND condition.

Example: When new sales data is imported into your sales table, an event-triggered flow can automatically initiate reporting tasks, ensuring your sales dashboard is always current.

Using the Flow Trigger App for Cross-project Flows

Complex workflows often require cross-project or cross-organization processing. The Flow Trigger App allows you to trigger a flow directly in another Keboola project, facilitating seamless collaboration between different teams or organizational units.

Example: A marketing team updates a campaign table in their project. The Flow Trigger App immediately initiates a flow in the analytics team's project to update performance metrics, ensuring both teams stay synchronized.

Conditional Flows and Artificial State Tables

Conditional flows only execute tasks when specific conditions are met. By using artificial state tables as event triggers, you can streamline conditional workflows, reducing unnecessary processing.

Example: A transformation runs every 5 minutes but only creates a trigger table if a certain threshold is reached, like inventory levels dropping below a minimum. This ensures data processing only happens when necessary.

Advanced Workflow Simplification with Variables

Managing multiple data transformations for similar tasks can be cumbersome. By implementing variables in flows, you simplify this management significantly. Variables allow you to use a single transformation configuration while specifying different parameters for various tasks.

For instance, imagine a scenario where you compute daily metrics for recent data (last month) but recalculate metrics for the entire dataset weekly. Traditionally, this would require two separate transformations—one for recent data and one for historical data. However, using variables, you maintain a single transformation and define the scope of data processing via task parameters within flows.

To configure variables:

1. Select the task in your flow.
2. Choose 'Show details' and click 'Set advanced parameters'.
3. Define your variable (e.g., year, date range) for each specific task.

Example: You have a transformation calculating metrics based on the year variable. Usually set to "2016", you need to recalculate using data from "2020". By specifying the variable value "2020" in the flow task parameters, the transformation automatically processes the desired data, overriding default configuration variables.

This approach ensures consistency across tasks and reduces the maintenance burden when updating calculation logic, metrics, or configurations.

Debugging and Troubleshooting Flows

Debugging flows is straightforward with Keboola's built-in tools. Job details clearly display the variable values applied during each task execution, providing full context for troubleshooting and debugging.

If an error occurs, notifications ensure immediate awareness. Detailed job logs and error messages simplify the troubleshooting process, enabling rapid identification and resolution.

Example: Suppose a flow fails due to incorrect variable settings. Reviewing the job details quickly reveals the incorrect variable value, allowing efficient remediation.

Best Practices Summary and Recommendations

• Set up notifications to multiple communication channels.
• Utilize event-triggered flows for immediate data processing.
• Leverage the Flow Trigger App for complex cross-project workflows.
• Implement artificial state tables for conditional flow execution.
• Use variables extensively to simplify and streamline workflows.
• Regularly monitor and debug flows to quickly resolve any issues.

By applying these best practices, your organization can significantly improve data processing efficiency, reduce manual effort, and enhance overall data quality.

Ready to optimize your data flows? Discover the full capabilities of Keboola and transform your data management today.