Thank you to everyone who participated in our AMA on Actions! For those who couldn’t join, we’ve put together the top five highlights from the session. You can also dive into the full discussion to explore detailed answers from our product experts by reading the complete discussion thread.
Here are the key takeaways:
1. Key Differences between Action Cache vs. Transaction Metadata
Actions Cache is used for sharing data across multiple executions of Actions that are not specific to a user, such as an external service access token. Actions Transaction Metadata is used for sharing information between Actions within the same authentication transaction for a specific user, and the data is cleared after the transaction is complete.
2. Best Practices for Performance and Reliability
For optimal performance and reliability with Actions, our expert recommended key best practices:
- Implement caching to reduce external API calls
- Handle errors and timeouts to prevent failures from external dependencies
- Keep your Action code minimal and focused, balancing the number of Actions created
- For large scale, multi-tenant deployments, use CI/CD tools such as Terraform or the Aut0 Deploy CLI for managing and deploying actions
3. User Deletion and Clean Up
A community member asked if there are plans to add a post-delete user trigger/Action to run automated cleanup processes. While there aren’t currently any plans for a separate trigger, this use case can be covered by Event Streams configured for the User Deleted event type. Looking ahead, the team plans to connect Actions as a destination for Event Streams to allow developers to bind an Action to a specific event type.
4. Actions and Organization Login Flow
It’s important to note that currently, Actions cannot be used to force a user to select an organization during the login flow. Post-login Actions run after a user has already authenticated, and the selection of the organization happens either before or after the Post Login Actions execution. This means that if you have a multi-organization application, you’ll need to rely on the standard login flow to guide users to the correct organization or create a separate login path per organization at the application level.
5. What’s on the Road Map
An exciting feature on the roadmap is the ability for Actions Transaction Metadata to go cross-trigger. More details to come. The team is actively working to improve the overall developer experience and help with performance and maintenance, so we are working on Action Modules. This will provide a more modular approach to building Actions and will expand the Actions Types NPM library, providing developers with additional tools and resources.
What’s Next
Check back soon for details on our next Ask Me Anything. To view past AMA topics, check out the Community AMA series category here.