👩💻 The HTTP Request (REST API) step
This post is to raise awareness of an additional workflow step, that is increasingly being used to provide value in many different Aperture Data Studio deployments. This step allows workflows to call a REST API in a flexible yet well-controlled manner.
What do you mean additional workflow step?
When you install Data Studio, it comes with a collection of workflow steps out of the box (see here for the full list) to allow you to perform all manner of different data preparation, cleansing, validation and other activities.
In addition to a wealth of ‘core’ functionality, Data Studio has been designed to ‘evolve’ as you use it for more and more different projects. The software is backed by an extensive product roadmap, with new functionality available on a frequent basis (available to all licensed customers), an active community where you can ask questions and make suggestions for future functionality, and an SDK (software development kit) that allows Java developers to build additional capability into the product in an agile way.
Experian have a dedicated technical team who can support you in building bespoke ‘Extensions’ or ‘Custom Steps’ if required, and can offer training to your technical teams on getting up to speed with the SDK for building your own steps.
The SDK has already been used to help build specific functionality to help our clients get more value from the product, including for:
- Connecting to Experian enrichment services (e.g. Utilities, ConsumerView & BusinessView data)
- Integrating with additional technologies (E.g. for creating a ticket in Jira when a DQ issue is detected, updating a trust flag in Alation etc)
- Additional data manipulation (e.g. text-to-columns, find and replace)
- Creating non-standard exports (e.g. Credit bureau submission formats such as metro2, CAIS or Insights data files)
HTTP Request Step
One of the most frequently used additional workflow steps at the moment is the HTTP Request step that allows for REST API calls to be made from a Data Studio workflow. These can be used to pull data in from an API end-point, but more crucially they can be used to pass data from a workflow to an API to perform a search request and produce a response that can be then used in the workflow and fed into additional workflow steps, exported to external connections and more.
See below for a short (<6min) video of me demonstrating this with a couple of examples.
How do I get access?
If you’d be interested in getting access to this particular step, or any of the others mentioned in this post, or if have any other questions about additional functionality you’d like to unlock in your instance of Data Studio please reach out to your account manager or drop us a comment below.
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