Github Actions secret not being passed to workflow

Question

I have the following code to do a repository dispatch to another repository:

jobs:
  trigger-repository-dispatch:
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  env:
    ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN }}
    REPOSITORY: ${{ inputs.repository }}
  steps:
    - name: Checkout project
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Trigger dependant common project repository dispatch
      run: |
        curl -X POST https://api.github.com/repos/${REPOSITORY}/dispatches \
        -H 'Accept: application/vnd.github.everest-preview+json' \
        -H "Authorization: Bearer ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
        --data '{"event_type": "success"}'

In the secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN its my PAT to authenticate with the otre repo.

This code works if I set the env.ACCESS_TOKEN variable with plain text but if I try to read it from secrets it returns this and of course doesn't trigger the destination workflow:

{
  "message": "Bad credentials",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest"
}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

If the GHA workflow is triggered as workflow_call you must pass the secrets from the caller (or in my case, the caller hierarchy) as stated in Reusing Workflows: Using inputs and secrets in a reusable workflow.