Today we're proud to announce major new additions to the Losant Platform. These include organizations for business accounts, workflow import/export, workflow global configuration, new workflow nodes for latching and time checking, and more.
Organizations
Business users now have access to powerful new organization features to collaborate on applications, dashboards, devices, and more.
Organizations are currently limited to business accounts. If you'd like to learn more about being a Losant business user, please contact us.
Workflow Globals
Workflow globals allow you to centralize configuration variables. This allows you to define things like API keys outside of the nodes themselves. This becomes very important when using workflow import/export tools since the global, and possibly sensitive, variables can optionally not be exported.
Once globals are defined, they are accessible on the "globals" payload field.
Workflow Import / Export
Workflows can now be easily shared by using the new import / export features.
The export button will provide you a JSON file describing this workflow. If you have sensitive information in the globals, you can uncheck the option to include their values.
You can then import a previously exported workflow. Typically you'll do this from a newly created and blank workflow. This allows you to easily share workflows between accounts or with your community.
Latch Workflow Node
The latch workflow node allows you to perform an action once until the latch is reset.
The above example is monitoring a freezer and sends us an SMS alert if the temperature gets too high. The latch node allows us to only send the SMS alert once, otherwise we would continually get alerts every time the temperature was reported. The latch condition:
{{ data.tempF }} > 36
will allow the workflow to continue only once when the temperature exceeds 36 degrees. Even if the device keeps reporting a temperature greater than 36, the latch won't continue until it is reset. The reset condition:
{{ data.tempF }} < 32
resets the latch and will allow it to continue again. This example will send an SMS alert when the temperature goes above 36 degrees, but won't send another SMS until the temperature goes under 32 and then back above 36.
Time Range Workflow Node
The time range workflow node makes it very easy to check if something has occurred between certain hours of the day. An example might be an alarm system that you only want to trigger alerts during the night.
The above example will only continue the workflow if the current time is between 8:00PM and 6:00AM and the day of week is between Monday and Friday.
View / Edit Workflow Storage
The get value and store value nodes allow you to persist data between workflow runs. You can now view, modify, and manually create these entries on the new workflow storage tab.
Many of these features come directly from requests from our users. Continue letting us know what to build and how to improve the platform by providing feedback on our forums.