Workflow Editor: Raw and Formatted Attributes

What are attributes?

Attributes are metadata that defines the properties of a field or tag. 

As an identity decisioning platform, Alloy is integrated with internal and external data sources and provides a plethora of attributes. There are various ways to leverage attributes in a workflow (e.g., tags, outcome logics). These attributes can be used to verify information and in tag and outcome logic, making it highly customizable in the workflow.

Raw vs. Formatted Attributes

There are two types of attributes generally available with data services in Alloy: Raw and Formatted.

Raw Attributes

Raw attributes are provided by the data services mapped out untouched in the raw response. These attributes reference fields in the raw response.

Formatted Attributes

Formatted attributes are Alloy-generated, meaning the data services provided data are used, but Alloy does some formatting. These attributes are more readable and useful versions of raw attributes. For example, formatted attributes can be used to perform mathematical calculations/aggregations that are not provided in the raw response itself. Historically, formatted attributes were used to ensure a value would always return or be present because raw attributes can be returned as undefined, which can cause an evaluation to fail. However, Alloy supports error handling - to learn more about how error handling can work, please consider these other helpful articles:

• What is a Data Service Failure, and what to do if a Data Service fails?
• Using Evaluation Summary to See Why Data Sources Failed to Run