Hi everyone,

I'm building a workflow in Watsonx Orchestrate and hit a wall with something that feels like it should be simple - joining two lists together - but apparently requires a workaround involving an external API.

🔧 What my workflow does

The flow performs the following steps:

1. Lists files from a specific Google Drive folder.
2. Reads the content of each file.
3. Passes the content to a Generative AI step to create customized text.
4. Creates new files in Google Drive.
5. Then I need to update those new files with the AI-generated content.

🎯 The challenge

At the end of the flow, I have two lists:

• fileIds: a list of newly created file IDs.
• contents: a list of strings generated by the AI.

What I need is a single combined list like this:

json

[  { "fileId": "abc123", "content": "Generated text 1" },  { "fileId": "def456", "content": "Generated text 2" }]

So I can run a foreach loop over that and update each file with its corresponding content.

💡 Current workaround

Right now, I'm using an external FastAPI microservice (hosted on Heroku) that:

• Accepts the two lists (fileIds and contents)
• Zips them together by index
• Returns the merged list of { fileId, content } objects

I exposed this as an OpenAPI skill with an API key for security. It works perfectly - but it feels like overkill just for merging two aligned lists.

❓ My question

Is there a native way in Watson Orchestrate to zip or join two lists by index into a single list of objects, without calling an external API?

Even a workaround using expressions, foreach, or variable tricks would be great. I just want to avoid depending on an external service for something this basic.

✅ End goal

Combine two parallel lists into one list of objects { fileId, content }, entirely within Orchestrate.

Any ideas, hacks, or examples would be massively appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hello Cristian,

A few questions to clarify your use case and to understand what features may be available to accomplish your goal without an external API, since Skill Flows, Projects/Workflows, and AI Assistant Actions have some different capabilities.

1. Is this specifically a "Workflow" (Project), or a Skill Flow?
2. Are you using an AI Assistant? How do people initiate your flow?

Thank you,

Enrico

Hi everyone,

I'm building a workflow in Watsonx Orchestrate and hit a wall with something that feels like it should be simple - joining two lists together - but apparently requires a workaround involving an external API.

🔧 What my workflow does

The flow performs the following steps:

1. Lists files from a specific Google Drive folder.
2. Reads the content of each file.
3. Passes the content to a Generative AI step to create customized text.
4. Creates new files in Google Drive.
5. Then I need to update those new files with the AI-generated content.

🎯 The challenge

At the end of the flow, I have two lists:

• fileIds: a list of newly created file IDs.
• contents: a list of strings generated by the AI.

What I need is a single combined list like this:

json

[  { "fileId": "abc123", "content": "Generated text 1" },  { "fileId": "def456", "content": "Generated text 2" }]

So I can run a foreach loop over that and update each file with its corresponding content.

💡 Current workaround

Right now, I'm using an external FastAPI microservice (hosted on Heroku) that:

• Accepts the two lists (fileIds and contents)
• Zips them together by index
• Returns the merged list of { fileId, content } objects

I exposed this as an OpenAPI skill with an API key for security. It works perfectly - but it feels like overkill just for merging two aligned lists.

❓ My question

Is there a native way in Watson Orchestrate to zip or join two lists by index into a single list of objects, without calling an external API?

Even a workaround using expressions, foreach, or variable tricks would be great. I just want to avoid depending on an external service for something this basic.

✅ End goal

Combine two parallel lists into one list of objects { fileId, content }, entirely within Orchestrate.

Any ideas, hacks, or examples would be massively appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hi Enrico,

Thanks for the quick response.

To clarify, this is a Workflow (Project) in Watson Orchestrate, not a Skill Flow. The flow is triggered from the Workflow interface, not from an AI Assistant.

Let me explain the exact use case and where the issue arises.

🔍 What the flow looks like

(See the attached image)

The workflow performs the following steps:

1. Lists files from a Google Drive folder.
2. Reads each file's content.
3. Sends the content to a Generative AI task that produces a list of custom texts (one per file).
4. Creates a new file in Google Drive for each AI response.
5. Needs to update each of those files with its respective AI-generated content.

🔄 The Problem

At the end of the process, we have:

• A list of new file IDs (returned from the "Create file" step).
• A list of generated text contents (returned from the Generative AI step).

These are two separate, aligned lists:

• Example:
  • fileIds = ["abc123", "def456"]
  • contents = ["Generated text 1", "Generated text 2"]

✅ What we need

We simply want to combine these into a single list of objects like:

json
[  { "fileId": "abc123", "content": "Generated text 1" },  { "fileId": "def456", "content": "Generated text 2" }]

This would allow us to loop through each item and update the file with the correct content in one final step.

🧩 Where we're stuck

There doesn't seem to be a built-in way in Watson Orchestrate to join two lists by index. The platform lets us iterate through one list using a Foreach block, but we haven't found a way to merge two lists together natively without an external service.

Let me know if there's a native feature, hack, or workaround inside the Workflow builder to achieve this. Happy to provide more details or test any suggestion.

Thanks again,
Cristian Rojas

Hello Cristian,

A few questions to clarify your use case and to understand what features may be available to accomplish your goal without an external API, since Skill Flows, Projects/Workflows, and AI Assistant Actions have some different capabilities.

1. Is this specifically a "Workflow" (Project), or a Skill Flow?
2. Are you using an AI Assistant? How do people initiate your flow?

Thank you,

Enrico

Hi everyone,

I'm building a workflow in Watsonx Orchestrate and hit a wall with something that feels like it should be simple - joining two lists together - but apparently requires a workaround involving an external API.

🔧 What my workflow does

The flow performs the following steps:

1. Lists files from a specific Google Drive folder.
2. Reads the content of each file.
3. Passes the content to a Generative AI step to create customized text.
4. Creates new files in Google Drive.
5. Then I need to update those new files with the AI-generated content.

🎯 The challenge

At the end of the flow, I have two lists:

• fileIds: a list of newly created file IDs.
• contents: a list of strings generated by the AI.

What I need is a single combined list like this:

json

[  { "fileId": "abc123", "content": "Generated text 1" },  { "fileId": "def456", "content": "Generated text 2" }]

So I can run a foreach loop over that and update each file with its corresponding content.

💡 Current workaround

Right now, I'm using an external FastAPI microservice (hosted on Heroku) that:

• Accepts the two lists (fileIds and contents)
• Zips them together by index
• Returns the merged list of { fileId, content } objects

I exposed this as an OpenAPI skill with an API key for security. It works perfectly - but it feels like overkill just for merging two aligned lists.

❓ My question

Is there a native way in Watson Orchestrate to zip or join two lists by index into a single list of objects, without calling an external API?

Even a workaround using expressions, foreach, or variable tricks would be great. I just want to avoid depending on an external service for something this basic.

✅ End goal

Combine two parallel lists into one list of objects { fileId, content }, entirely within Orchestrate.

Any ideas, hacks, or examples would be massively appreciated. Thanks in advance!