By Danika Olson
February 2023 Consultants Corner
1.) Checking the status of a running workflow, determining the cause of workflow failure, etc.
If your organization has several workflows and you are notified of a failure – you will want to dig into what happened.
Enable search:
You can be as specific as you want here, maybe you only know the workflow name and that your workflow has been working fine up until the last few days. Select the workflow you know the issue is stemming from and check the start date to whatever time range is needed.
Once you hit search you will see all instances of the workflow, you can check the status column to see which instances have been completed successfully, which are waiting, or which may have failed.
I can see that the bottom two are stuck in waiting, to find out more information – double-click on the instance. Here you can explore where and why the instance status isn’t completed. In my example, my instance is stuck in waiting due to a conditional decision at the end of my workflow. On the condition’s status tab, I can see exactly which condition and determine the root of the problem.
I can also see this information on the Workflow tab, highlighted in blue is the portion of my workflow that has a conditional branch that has not been fulfilled or is still running.
Each workflow is different, but you can utilize the tools here to figure out what is causing errors or terminating your workflow.
2.) Organizing workflows by department, project, etc.
Another simple feature of workflow designer that helps me when getting started, is organizing my workflows. Typically, I organize by project name or department. It’s a simple and small feature, but as you continue your work in Workflow Designer, you may start to struggle – what did I name that workflow? Where is it? Starting off on the right foot with organized folders that fit your organization's needs is a great way to avoid confusion.
