How to create the Email Task (Re-usable)

Why re-usable?. Becuase we’d be using the same email task for all the sessions in this workflow.

1. Go to Workflow Manager and connect to the repository and the folder in which your workflow is present.
2. Go to the Workflow Designer Tab.
3. Click on Workflow > edit (from the Menu ) and create a workflow variable as below (to hold the failure email address).

Failure Email workflow variable

4. Go to the “Task Developer” Tab and click create from the menu.
5. Select “Email Task”, enter “Email_Wkf_Test_Failure” for the name (since this email task is for different sessions in wkf_test).
Click “Create” and then “Done”. Save changes (Repository -> Save or the good old ctrl+S).
6. Double click on the Email Task and enter the following details in the properties tab.

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Email User Name : $$FailureEmail   (Replace the pre-populated session variable $PMFailureUser,                                     since we be setting this for each workflow as needed). Email subject   : Informatica workflow ** WKF_TEST **  failure notification. Email text      : (see below. Note that the server varibles might be disabled, but will be available during run time). Please see the attched log for Details. Contact ETL_RUN_AND_SUPPORT@XYZ.COM for further information. %g Folder : %n Workflow : wkf_test Session : %s

Create_Email_Task

Emails in the Parameter file :-

We’ve created the workflow variable $$FailureEmail and used it in the email task. But how and when is the value assigned?
You can manage the failure emails by assigning the value in the parameter file.
Here is my parameter file for this example. You can seperate multiple emails using comma.

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infa@ DEV /> cat wkf_test.param [rchamarthi.WF:wkf_Test] $$FailureEmail=rajesh@etl-developer.com   [rchamarthi.WF:wkf_Test.ST:s_m_T1] $DBConnection_Target=RC_ORCL102   [rchamarthi.WF:wkf_Test.ST:s_m_T2] $DBConnection_Target=RC_ORCL102

While it might look like a simpler approach initially, hard-coding emails IDs in the email task is a bad idea. Here’s why.

Like every other development cycle, Informatica ETLs go thorugh Dev, QA and Prod and the failure email for each of the environment will be different. When you promote components from Dev to QA and then to Prod, everything from Mapping to Session to Workflow should be identical in all environments. Anything that changes or might change should be handled using parameter files (similar to env files in Unix). This also works the other way around. When you copy a workflow from Production to Development and try to make changes, the failure emails will not go to business users or QA teams as the development parameter file only has the developer email Ids.

If you use parameter files, here is how it would be set up in different environments once.
After the initial set up, you’ll hardly change it in QA and Prod and migrations will never screw this up.

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In development   : $$FailureEmail=developer1@xyz.com,developer2@xyz.com" In QA / Testing  : $$FailureEmail=r=developer1@xyz.com,developer2@xyz.com,QA_TEAM@xyz.com In Production    : $$FailureEmail=IT_OPERATIONS@xyz.com,ETL_RUN@xyz.com,BI_USERS@xyz.com