Hi all,
Can someone help me understand why I would want to use a sub-scenario over the http+webhook approach? I don’t understand the value in doing this. Thanks!
Just saw a post from 2024 explaining that sub-scenarios circumvent webhook outage issues. I don’t think this is valid unless you’re not using webhooks at all. Since all my scenarios start with a webhook, the rest of the flow won’t trigger if the first one fails.
Within Make itself, the biggest reason is probably security.
Webhooks don’t have any inherent authentication mechanism other than “security through obscurity” - a long, random URL. Anyone who can find that URL could initiate your scenario. You could build your own authentication mechanism in, but it’s not trivial.
Sub-scenarios can be called from your own Make org, or externally to Make authorize by an API Key or your Make login credentials.
The second benefit is that there’s no danger of input or output parameters mismatch. When you use the Run a scenario module to run a sub-scenario, it knows what input parameters are expected and prompts you. It also knows what output parameters will be returned (if any) and makes them available for mapping. With Webhooks, you’re on your own.
The last, but potentially HUGE use of sub-scenarios is in “re-use”.
If you have core fundamental business processes that you might want to use in multiple spaces, build them as sub-scenarios.
Those can then be used in traditional Make scenarios, but also as Tools in Make AI Agents.
We’re also working with a number of external vendors to explore the potential for Make sub-scenarios to be callable directly from their platforms.
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Very helpful response, thank you! Definitely understand the value of using sub-scenarios for internal processing.
Regarding this statement:
I think HTTP+webhook approach is also very re-usable. That’s how I have my scenarios broken up. Pretty straight forward to include a payload in the HTTP request module.
That’s true, but it’s easy to end up with mis-matches between the HTTP payloads and the parameters the Webhook scenario expects. Plus, you have to copy and paste URLs.
Sub-scenarios avoid both of those problems.
Two other additional benefit I forgot to mention are the Relation Tree tab:
and the enhanced scenario list:
These both show the relationship between parent, child and bridge scenarios - these are available in Teams and Enterprise plans.