Adding special processing to a flow (Toolbox utilities)

App Connect provides a toolbox with a set of utilities that you can use to apply specialized processing to the behavior of a flow, such as to decide between alternative paths through the flow or to modify the data mapping between actions. For example, you can apply "if-then-else" logic to use data returned from an event or action to decide between alternative actions.

To add special processing when editing a flow, complete the following steps:

  1. Click a (+) in the flow diagram
  2. Select the Toolbox tab.
  3. Select the toolbox utility that you want to add to your flow
Figure 1. Toolbox tab in the flow editor
Toolbox tab in the flow editor

When you add a toolbox utility to a flow, it's added as a node in the same way as an event or action for an application or API, with fields for you to configure the special processing behavior of the utility.

For a summary of the toolbox utilities that App Connect provides, see the following table. For more information about a toolbox utility, click the link to the utility page.

Table 1. Toolbox utilities
Scheduler icon Scheduler Trigger a flow on demand; for example, at repeating intervals or on a specific day or time. Available for event-driven flows only. Can be added only as an event.
If icon If (conditional) Apply conditional processing to data from an earlier event or action in a flow.  
For each icon For each Iteratively loop through a collection of retrieved items to extract individual records so you can take further action.  
Log icon Log Define a log message that you want to send to your App Connect logs. Available only in App Connect on IBM Cloud.
Notification icon Notification View business-relevant information that's emitted from a flow and choose a course of action at the click of a button.  
Batch process icon Batch process Retrieve a large number of records (bulk data) from an application and process the records in parallel. Available only in App Connect on IBM Cloud.
Set variable icon Set variable Create a variable with defined properties and data mappings that can be reused in a flow.  
JSON parser icon JSON parser Parse data that's encoded in JSON format from an earlier node in a flow.  
CSV parser icon CSV parser Parse tabular data that's formatted as comma separated values (CSV) from an earlier node in a flow.  
XML parser icon XML parser Parse a string of XML text in UTF-8 encoding into an XML object representation of the string.