Recipes: Chain Automations into One Flow

A recipe connects several pieces of work — automations, scripts, document processing, bulk uploads, and human review — into one flow that runs step by step. Use a single automation for one routine, a batch to run one automation over many records at once, and a recipe when several routines must happen in order, with decisions and check-points between them. A recipe can itself contain a batch step, so the two compose.

Naming note: saved pipelines in Document Preparation are also called "recipes" — those process files. The Recipes described here live in the sidebar under Recipes and orchestrate whole flows (and can include a document-processing step).

Building a Recipe

Open Recipes → New Recipe, give it a name and description, and click Create & design
You land in the designer: a visual canvas plus a text summary of steps and connections, kept in sync — hovering one highlights the other
Add steps with the palette buttons; each new step is automatically chained after the previous one, so simple flows build with clicks. Use Connect for branches.
Click Save — "Saved ✓ — runnable" or "Saved — not runnable yet:" with the exact reasons

Step Types

Step	What it does
Start / End	Every recipe has exactly one Start and at least one End. Tick This recipe is handed its instances when it starts on the Start step when whoever runs the recipe supplies the records — a recipe started with records but without that box ticked is refused.
Task	Runs one of your Scripts or Automations
Instances	Selects instances that already exist — by template, name mask (`INV-2026-`), when they were created or last changed, and status — and passes them to the next step. A count beside the step shows what it matches right now. Name instance ids under except* to leave those out.
Batch	Runs an Automation over every record on the step's input (a checkbox on any Automation task)
Doc Prep	Runs one of your document-processing pipelines over files you pick at run time
Bulk Upload	Uploads the incoming files as new records on a published form template
Decision	Branches the flow (at least two ways out)
Wait	Pauses for human review — set a reviewer email on the step, or leave it blank to notify yourself

Rules the designer enforces before a recipe can run: one Start, at least one reachable End, every step reachable, no loops — recipes flow forward only.

Running a Recipe

Running requires the Nocarta Desktop app. You can create, design, and read run logs from any browser, but the Run on this computer button only activates in the desktop app — elsewhere it shows: "Recipes run on the desktop app — open this page in Nocarta Desktop to run it." The thinking and bookkeeping happen on the server; the actual browser work of each step happens on your computer.

While running, the page shows one row per step with its status and how many records went in and came out ("N in → M out")
When a document-processing step needs files, a panel asks for a folder and a file pattern (e.g. *.pdf)
Every run has its own permanent log page — reach it from "View full log →" or the Recent runs list. Record identifiers in the log link straight to each record.
A batch step's row links into the batch itself, with a tally of completed and failed records. A partly-successful batch continues the recipe with the records that succeeded; the failures stay visible in the log.

Human Review Steps

When a run reaches a Wait step, it pauses and the reviewer gets an email — "Review needed — (recipe name)" — linking to the review screen. There, the reviewer sees one card per waiting record:

A Keep checkbox per record — untick to drop a record from what continues
Every field, editable in place — corrections are saved onto the record and attributed to the reviewer
Approve & continue resumes the run with the kept records

Only the recipe's owner can open the review screen — the reviewer email is a notification, not an access grant. Approving works from any device; the recipe's next desktop step then continues once the desktop app reconnects.

When a Step Gets Stuck

If a step declares itself stuck (rather than simply failing), the run pauses in a needs help state, you get an email, and the run page shows "This step needs your help" with the step's own message, its category, the last checkpoint reached, and — when one was captured — a screenshot of the moment it got stuck.

Three buttons, explained on the panel itself:

Retry step — runs the step again with the same input
Skip step — passes its input through unchanged and moves on
Abort run — cancels the whole run

An "Ask the assistant" control can diagnose the situation and pre-select one of the three — it never acts on its own. Your decision is recorded in the run log. When possible, resolve on the running desktop page so a retry is picked up immediately.

Statuses and Failure Behaviour

A run is pending, running, needs help, and ends completed, failed, or cancelled
A failed step fails the run — there is no silent continue-on-error. The one exception: a batch step that partly succeeded continues with its successful records.
Saving a runnable design snapshots a numbered version, and each run pins the version it started with — editing a recipe never affects a run already in flight
Deleting a recipe also removes its run history and saved versions (the delete button warns you)