Docebo Connect: Creating Events via Webhook

Hi mckamw99,

Sure, this can work. You can catch the webhook payload after the session is created in Docebo, then add a step in the recipe that creates an event and links it to the session using the session ID from the payload.

One important question though…. 

Where or how are you getting the other event fields you need, for example the event name, day or date, start time, end time, timezone, and any optional fields?

Best,
Jan

Hi Jan!

We would be using the trigger date as the date, session name for event name, and static values for the start time, end time, timezone, etc...

Hi!

I am not well versed in webhooks and recipes, but wish I was!  

We just finished an engagement with Docebo Premium Support to do something like this. The goal of that engagement was to have events created at the same time as sessions are created.  We didn’t use a webhook - but used a Lookup Table and a Docebo Connect Recipe.

A Lookup Table in Docebo Connect can only contain 10 columns.

We went with:

• course name
• session name
• max enrollment allowed
• instructor (which we list as the email addresses separated with a comma)
• session description
• custom deadline days
• date (must be in yyyy/mm/dd)
• Time begin and time end (must be in 24 hour time)
• Location
• Custom URL

this is loaded as a .csv and we overwrite what is loaded each time.

The rest of the values are hard coded on the backend of a recipe, which remain ‘off’ and that we ‘test’ each time we want to load the new sessions and events.

The session name must be unique for this to work. Otherwise the event is created under the original session that exists with that name.  This allows for multiple events to be created under the same session.

I’m not sure if this is helpful to you, but I hope it helps someone who may be looking to do something similar. 

Best of luck!

Hi mckamw99,

Yes, if you can map the required fields for event creation using values from the webhook payload or session details plus a few static values, this is straightforward to set up in Docebo Connect.

Elaine, thanks for sharing. Creating courses, sessions, and events from a lookup table can work well too, especially when you want to load batches of sessions and control the values centrally.

Please send me a direct message if you need some help with the setup. 

Best,

Jan

​@Elaine_Barnes we recently rolled out connect for our system and I am learning more and more about it every day. This method you describe really intrigues me, but I just can't wrap my head around it based on your description. Are you by chance going to Inspire this year? I think this would be a great topic to present.

I’d really like to know more details about this especially the part where you overwrite and “test” each time. Is it really more efficient than duplicating sessions and editing? 

John

We have a very similar implementation to ​@Elaine_Barnes to upload sessions and events at the same time. It works very nicely!

To answer your question about test and overwrite, ​@John Sager Connect is meant to have recipes run and look for various triggers. If you want to do anything ad hoc in Connect, the actual way to do it is by creating APIs through the API platform. However, that is a lot of work for some applications, and we don’t always want to go through the hassle of creating an API when we can do it through the Connect UI, which is where the “Test” functionality comes in. For any recipe that is a recipe function, you can test your recipe with test input data, and when there is no input data, it runs as if it had a trigger. Because we want the trigger to be at specific times and when we want it, we don’t have to define a special trigger. you can just test it, and it will run the recipe. 

The overwrite functionality comes with Lookup tables. Recipes can access lookup tables with certain actions (that’s their whole purpose), so you can create a recipe that has no inputs but pulls all the data from a lookup table every time it is run. In the lookup table area, you can upload data via csv. So, the process for this type of implementation is:

• upload your csv to the lookup table, enabling the option to delete previous data.
• find the recipe you are running and save and test it with the in-built “test recipe” option in the top right corner.

This will then update your sessions from the csv.

For ​@mckamw99, you might not need a lookup table at all, and if you do, I suggest looking into a data table, as it will allow you to track your events that are created outside of logging successful API calls. Data tables have more row capacity, more column capacity, and they have better type safety. However, they do not have any sort of csv upload option. In addition, data tables have a trigger for when items are added to the table, which might be useful for your implementation.

I can also recommend using the custom action and API instead of the Docebo app action if you are having trouble. Sometimes the Docebo app will have required fields that are not actually required and other quirks. The API can give you more control, flexibility, and visibility to debug. More than happy to go into more detail on the info you would need to implement this if need be!