Top 10 Tips for Advanced MFT Workflows
7 Feb 2024
Improve Business Processes with GoAnywhere’s Advanced Workflows
One of the most advanced features of GoAnywhere MFT is also one of its most popular – Advanced Workflows.
Workflows (also called “Projects”) expand and unlock superior automation for your file transfers. They enable you to enhance encryption, strengthen security capabilities, and run tasks seamlessly without human intervention.
Those already using Advanced Workflows know how much time and effort this feature can save. It takes the drudgery out of moving data between applications, between employees, and within their supply chain ecosystem.
Whether you’re in search of new tips and tricks, or just getting started with Advanced Workflows, this article will help you tap the potential of GoAnywhere MFT.
1. Create Projects with No Programming Skills
You don’t need to be a technical genius or have any programming skills to create Advanced Workflows.
GoAnywhere’s Project designer window couldn’t be any easier to use. It’s drag-and-drop interface puts over 100 unique tasks – copying, translating, moving, backing up, alerting, reporting, etc - at your fingertips. No clunky scripting is needed.
2. Configure Advanced Worksflows Resources
Resources are an essential function and act as GoAnywhere’s “arms” or “client”.
Configuring resources to network locations, email servers, and file transfer servers saves you time as you create your Advanced Workflows. Do it once, and you can use those resources in all your Projects.
There are more than 20 different resource types for GoAnywhere to connect to, such as Amazon S3 Buckets, Azure Blob Storage, and SSH servers (SFTP, SCP, SSH).
These pre-defined connections for internal servers, as well as external trading partners and locations, make it simple to build Projects which manipulate and move files.
3. Translate Data into Different Formats
Advanced Workflows comes with 15 tasks for data translation. They enable you to read and write files in multiple different formats, and seamlessly translate between them.
They include:
Read/write CSV, Excel, Fixed-Width-XML, JSON
Read flat file
SQL query output to various formats
Modify RowSet
4. Automate File Encryption/Decryption
With cybercriminals increasingly targeting company data, most businesses believe it’s critical to encrypt data when its being transferred. GoAnywhere makes this as simple as it is important.
With Advanced Workflows you can completely automate the process of encryption and decryption, for everything from documents to digital signatures and verifications.
All of it is done with the robust Open PGP standard.
5. Create and Use Conditional Statements
Conditional statements offer excellent control of Workflows within your Projects.
Using common “if/else” logic and loops, they can parse through variables or lists of files. By chaining Advanced Workflows tasks together, they perform their tasks when the Workflow runs and prior conditions are “true.”
6. Reference Projects as a Common Function
Projects you create can be called or referenced by multiple Projects. This enables commonly performed tasks to be utilised in multiple Projects in the manner of a common function or utility.
7. Run Workflows in Debug Mode
Running Workflows in Debug Mode enables easy testing and troubleshooting of individual Projects.
Users can interactively execute tasks one step at a time, and enable the job log and variable values to be monitored during each step.
At each break in time, the values of the variables can be altered before the next task is executed.
8. Schedule and Automate GoAnywhere Reports
Advanced Workflows can be used to schedule and automate reports. Reports can be generated and delivered, and email and text notifications sent.
GoAnywhere’s built-in scheduler can be used to execute Workflows at future dates and times. Projects can be scheduled to run on a one-off basis, or with a recurring frequency.
9. Control Data Security with Triggers
Triggers enable you to control the security of your data. They can automate Projects, send notifications based on user actions in GoAnywhere, and much more.
Triggers can be defined to monitor for certain events such as an account being disabled, a download failing, or a successful login.
A triggered event can initiate a response such as receiving an email when a file is uploaded by a trading partner or automatically removing a partial file from a folder if the file upload is unsuccessful.
10. Monitor Files for Determined Events
Advanced Workflows can do file-based monitoring for certain events. These events include:
Created
Modified
Deleted, and
Exists.
If you’d like to explore how your organisation can improve its efficiency through GoAnywhere’s Advanced Workflows, feel free to contact our Business Manager, Bradley Copson (mail to: bradley@gensys.com.au).
He’s always happy to have an obligation-free discussion, explain how simply we can transition you from outdated software and approaches, and offer you a zero-cost Proof of Concept.
Your Local Experts in Secure Managed File Transfer