Which one should I use - Batch macro or Iterative macro or Standard Macro?

[sagar_agarwal]

Hello All - I am learning to build macros for my work purpose and I am unable to grasp the basic concepts for this.

I would like to understand the key differences between these 3 types of macros and when one should use it. Also, I would like to know which type of macro should I use for my following 2 use cases:

1) I have a list of employee IDs field in one file; I would like to pass on this employee field as a paramater in the API URL to get the employee details and then parse the output.

2) I have a list of client IDs in one file; to fetch the client details, I have to first pass on the username/password/api-key to get a cookie and then send this cookie along with the API URL to get the response.

Thanks.

[MarqueeCrew · Accepted solution]

• Standard Macro:  Performs a function (or set of functions) as an encapsulated workflow.
• Batch Macro:  Performs a function (or set of functions) as an encapsulated workflow and groups the functions by a control parameter.  If, for instance, you were going to run a workflow once per client, you could pass an entire set of data into a batch macro and control it by an input of client IDs.  The results would be consistent with having run each client individually through the source workflow.
• Iterative Macro:  Performs a function (or set of functions) one record at a time until a condition is met.

I think that your first use case would be a standard macro.  Input of a list of employee IDs are fed to a download tool and parsed to output the employee ID plus the enrichment data.  The second macro could still be a standard macro where step one is to get the cookie and step two is to get the response (step three would be to parse the response).  If needed, the second could be a batch macro.

Cheers,

Mark

[sagar_agarwal]

Hey Mark - thank you for your response. I started building out a standard macro and I incorporated the same into another workflow. However, I see that I am unable to connect the output of Macro to any other tool such as Browse, Select, etc. How do I bring the output from the macro into my workflow for further processing?

[MarqueeCrew]

Because you have an 'R' output anchor, I assume that you've configured the macro output.  Is it possible that you put a macro onto this canvas before you configured and saved the macro with an output?  If you update the macro and add/remove an input or output, you should save the macro and add it back to the canvas.

That's my guess.

Cheers,

Mark

[sagar_agarwal]

Thank you Mark - that worked perfectly fine! Thank you very much