📣 Saving, sharing, and managing accounts just got a whole lot easier

[Adam_R]

We’re excited to share a major upgrade to the way you and your team manage integrations in Parabola!

With this upgrade, you’ll have the ability to save and share integration accounts across your organization – eliminating the need to re-enter credentials, or save credentials to card templates, in order to authorize new steps:

This update will make it easier for you to…

• Manage and re-authenticate accounts (if an authentication expires, you only need to update it in one place, and all Flows using that account will be updated)
• Improve visibility into integration accounts across your organization
• Share integration accounts across your team
• Manage permissions for specific accounts

Here’s a brief video overview outlining the upgrade (more on the migration process below).

What you need to know

Most importantly, if you do nothing, everything will continue to work. No action is required.

If you’re interested in understanding more about the migration and how you can take action to clean up your org, keep reading

Benefits of this migration

If your organization leverages templates to share auth, frequently needs to re-authenticate specific integrations, or wants to make it easier for you and your teammates to connect accounts, a few minutes of legwork can greatly improve your team’s experience working with integration steps.

Updates to card templates

TL;DR

Card Templates are no longer used to share accounts; instead, you can now easily share accounts directly in a step without the template. Accounts previously saved to templates are available within the corresponding integration step.

The upgrade

Before this update, many Parabola users leveraged Card Templates to save and share integration accounts across their team.

With this update, Card Templates no longer save accounts. Instead of accounts being shared via templates, accounts can now be shared directly within integration steps themselves. This will make accounts easier to find, share, and manage.

Migration details

For accounts that were previously saved to a Template, you’ll now see that account shared across your org in the drop-down list of accounts within the integration step.

Let’s say you previously had a card template titled, “Pull Inventory from Google Drive,” which was connected to your Google account and shared across your org. Now, when you open a Pull from Google Drive step in any Parabola Flow, you’ll see that authentication is available in a drop-down list of accounts within that step – clearly titled based on the template that the account was pulled from:

By default, these “Shared” accounts are not being used by any Flows.

If you previously had 5 unique templates connected to your Google Drive account, you’ll now have 5 “Shared” accounts available to use in your Google Drive steps. If you open up a specific Flow that used one of those templates, you’ll see that the Google Drive steps in the Flow are now connected to an account that says, “Available in this Flow” – which is different from the “Shared” account.

All to say – you can safely delete any “Shared” accounts you no longer want listed, with no fear of breaking Flows. More on migration tips below.

What if I have accounts that aren’t associated with Card Templates? (ie. ‘normal’ integration steps within Flows)

TL;DR

If you open a Flow that’s connected to an account (ex. a Flow connected to your Google Drive account), you’ll find that account listed only in the drop-down list within that specific Flow. By default, accounts are connected only to the Flow where it was originally authorized.

Migration details

Let’s say before the migration, you connected your Google Drive account to a Pull from Google Drive step. Now, when you open that same Google Drive step in that same Flow, you’ll see that account is still linked to that same step – nothing has changed.

If you (or a teammate) create a new Flow, you will not see that account listed. An account is linked only to its original Flow by default. To share an account across your team, click “Edit accounts” and edit the “Sharing settings.”

Sharing accounts

You can think of sharing accounts the same way you think about sharing Flows. You can…

• Keep an account private
• Share it only with specific teammates and assign “can use” or “can edit” permissions
• Share an account across your entire organization with custom permissions

With this all in mind, let’s talk through our recommendations.

Migration overview

For a detailed video overview outlining the migration process, click here.

In short, we recommend starting by cleaning up your list of accounts. Then, you can associate integration steps across your Flows with centralized, shared accounts instead of siloed, ‘Flow-level’ accounts.

This does not need to happen all at once, and your team can safely update accounts over time while doing day-to-day building in Parabola.

How to migrate: Example #1

Example

You have a Netsuite analyst account, and all Flows/Templates have historically leveraged this account.

Action

Connect all Netsuite steps to a central account by following these steps:

1. Open any Flow that is connected to Netsuite, and click into a “Pull from Netsuite” step
2. Click into the drop-down list of accounts in the top left, and scroll down to “Edit accounts”
3. Identity your ‘key’ account(s), and clearly rename them (ex. “Netsuite analyst account”) OR create a new default account
4. Delete any unnecessary shared accounts (as indicated by the icon) – Note that this action can only be performed by org admins
5. Once your list is clean, return to the step settings, and select your default account from the step’s drop-down list
6. Open other Flows connected to Netsuite and update each Netsuite step to use the default account (this does not need to be done all at once – you can slowly migrate steps over time. Just make sure your team knows which account(s) they should leverage moving forward.)

How to migrate: Example #2

What if I want Flows to stay connected to the same account(s) that my Templates were previously using?

You can simply open Flows that previously used those Templates, and from the drop-down list, select the account titled, “From Template: NAME.”

Example

I have two Templates that I previously used to share two separate Shopify accounts across my team. One is titled, “Connect to Betty’s account” and the other is titled, “Pull from Sue’s account.”

Action

1. Open Flows that were previously linked to Shopify via the “Connect to Betty’s account” Template
2. Open a “Pull from Shopify” step
3. From the drop-down list of accounts, link the step up with the account titled, “From Template: Connect to Betty’s account” (you’ll see the word “Shared” below the account title)
4. Repeat this process for the remaining Flows leveraging the “Connect to Betty’s account” Template, and then repeat the process for Flows connected to the “Pull from Sue’s account” Template – linking to the account titled, “From Template: “Pull from Sue’s account”

If you have trouble finding Flows leveraging specific Templates, or are a member of a large team and couldn’t possibly know where every Template is being used, don’t worry. Steps can be slowly updated over time, and your teammates can help (the ‘easy’ path for your teammates will be to simply select a shared account from a drop-down list instead of re-entering credentials if an authentication expires).

We’re also happy to share a list of Flows you can consider migrating (if you’re working with Parabola’s Launch team, you can expect to receive this list on Tuesday, December 10th).

Key takeaways

1. You can now share and manage integration accounts across your team to make sharing credentials, managing permissions, and re-authorizing accounts meaningfully easier
2. Templates are no longer used to share accounts – accounts previously saved to Templates can now be found within steps themselves, shared across your team
3. Accounts (ie. a Netsuite login used to auth a “Pull from Netsuite” step) can be shared and permissioned the same way as Flows (ex. private, shared with specific individuals, or shared across your team with read or edit permissions)
4. The most helpful thing admins can do for their teams today is ensure key integrations have clean lists of clearly-titled accounts
5. The second most helpful thing admins can do is ensure integration steps within Flows are using shared integrations, and encourage teammates to move integration steps to shared accounts for easier management
6. No action is required and Flows will continue to run as is

We think you’ll really enjoy the new system moving forward and are excited to hear your feedback.

Questions? Shoot us an email at help@parabola.io or drop a comment below – we’re here to help!

[Pushpendra_Singh]

Thank you so much! This was the feature I needed the most and have been hoping for since I started using Parabola in 2020.

[Adam_R]

Awesome to hear, @Pushpendra_Singh! Please let us know what you think – should be a big unlock