Flow activity

Flow Designer has a number of ways to help you see at a glance if there's a hiccup somewhere along the way. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- for example, a step is missing required configuration, another system isn't responding to a request from one of the steps, or an input can't consume the information it's fed at runtime.

Understand what's happening when flows don't flow

There are a few visual indicators to help make sure you don't have any problems during runtime. If you don't see these indicators but your flow isn't doing what you expect, use the Activity panel to debug runtime issues.

Missing configuration: When a step is missing configuration or information it's relying on, a warning badge appears in the corner.
No agents connected: When a step is configured to run on an xMatters Agent but no assigned agents are connected, the dot in the agent icon turns from green to red.

Unconnected trigger: Triggers only fire if there are steps connected to them. The exception is legacy Integration Builder triggers, which continue to execute whatever script is associated with them.

Disabled: You can enable and disable triggers (for example, you might disable a trigger if you're doing some troubleshooting or building out a new flow you don't want to fire just yet). Double-click the trigger and click the Enabled toggle to turn it on or off.

Deprecated: A custom step or HTTP trigger might be deprecated if a new and improved version is available.

Withdrawn: The version of the step has been withdrawn from use. Double-click the step in the flow to open its configuration screen (or select it and click the pencil icon) and select a newer version. Also check other steps further down the flow for alert badges that indicate missing configuration, since changing the step version might remove outputs used by these steps.
Orphans: When you disconnect steps from the previous step, they're orphaned. Since all steps are orphans until you connect them, and you may do this on purpose as you're refining your workflows, we don't warn you, but it's good to take a quick look around to see if you have any unconnected steps.

Loops

Flow Designer includes logic to detect and prevent flows from looping and unintentionally overwhelming system resources. Flow Designer considers it a loop when the same flow is triggered multiple times in a short period of time by a single sequence of system signals or scripted actions. When it detects a loop at runtime, Flow Designer cancels flow execution and logs an error in the Activity Panel indicating that a loop or circular flow reference was detected. For example, Flow Designer cancels flows when it detects the following types of loops:

  • An HTTP trigger executes a script that sends a request to the same HTTP trigger.
  • An alert status trigger fires when an alert is created and the triggered flow creates another alert using the same form.

Activity panel

Flow Designer includes an Activity panel that you can use to monitor the system requests for your flows. This is useful for determining if your flows completed successfully, or for troubleshooting and debugging flows that fail. By default, the panel logs all requests for a flow, including all successful and failed requests. Log data is retained based on your pricing plan.

To view the activity of all the flows on your canvas, click Activity at the top of the canvas:

To see a filtered view of activity for flows that include a particular step, hover over the step on the canvas, click the options menu (the vertical ellipsis icon), and select View Activity. Alternatively, you can click the View Activity button at the top of the step's configuration screen.

The Activity panel opens at the bottom of the screen, beneath the canvas and palette.

Integration Builder and Built-In Workflows

The Activity Stream, accessible through the Integration Builder and built-in workflows, now redirects to the Activity panel in Flow Designer.

To view the Activity panel in full-screen mode:

Click the Expand icon at the top right of the panel. Click it again to restore the panel to its original size.

To resize the Activity panel:

Hover your cursor over the top of the panel to display a drag handle that you can use to increase or decrease the size of the panel. Click and drag the top of the panel to a new position on your screen.

To resize individual columns in the Activity panel:

Hover your cursor over the border between two columns display a drag handle that you can use to move the edge of the column to the left or the right. Click and drag the column edge to a new position.

You can filter flow activity by date range or time period, along with request status or flow trigger type. You must select an option for the timeframe filter, or choose All Dates. The Request Status and Flow Trigger filters are optional.

  • Timeframe: By default, the Activity panel shows your flow activity for All Dates. You can choose to view requests from more specific time periods (such as the past 6 hours, past 1 hour, or the past 15 minutes) or set a Date Range. If you specify a date range, click Apply to update the displayed activity.

  • Request ID: You can view a request by searching its full UUID. This filter is helpful if you want to troubleshoot or review the results of a specific request and don't need to view other requests on the Activity panel.
  • Request Status: You can view requests with one of the status types below. For example, you can filter your flow activity to only view Failed requests within the past 15 minutes in order to troubleshoot any recent issues.
    • Completed - The step or trigger was executed successfully.
    • Failed - The step or trigger failed to execute properly due to an error.
    • Canceled - The step or trigger failed to execute within 60 seconds and timed out.
    • Waiting for Agent - The request is pending while the xMatters Agent runs the step or trigger.
    • Suppressed - Flood Control is enabled to reduce system noise, preventing the step or trigger from running.
  • Flow Trigger: You can view requests from a flow with a specific trigger. For example, you can filter your flow activity to only view requests from the Monitoring Tool X trigger within the past 1 hour in order to check if all of them were completed successfully.

From the high level list of all your flow activity within your selected filters, click the name of a request to view its details. To view the details of another request, simply select another request from the list.

Each request contains an icon that represents the trigger type of its associated flow and a banner that indicates its status. It is also marked with the date and time that it was initiated. Selecting a request in the list highlights the associated flow on the canvas and displays its details in the Activity panel under the following tabs:

  • Steps: Each step in the flow and whether it executed successfully or failed. Select a step to view its input and output parameters, if applicable, and their values.
    • For flows triggered by an HTTP request, the step details also contain the parameters, headers, and body of the incoming request.
    • For callable triggers, step details include requests from the trigger's associated callable flow step and link to view the step's activity.
    • For callable flow steps, step details include the associated callable trigger and link to view the trigger's activity.
  • Log: Details about the request and the request log.
    • Request Details: The UUID of the request, where it was executed (for example, in the cloud), and the date and time at which the request was submitted. For HTTP triggers, this also includes the authenticating user (the credentials for this user are used to authenticate requests the flow makes to xMatters).
    • Logs: Specific information about the nature of the request and its contents, and any errors that occurred. If the flow contains steps running on an xMatters Agent, it also provides information on when the flow switched from running on the cloud to the agent and back, and which agent it ran on. The breakdown of the log content is as follows:
      • The request headers, including the content type, authorization, and other identifying information.
      • The OAuth2 handshake request and response headers (only if the authentication failed).
      • The parameters used in the request.
      • The body of the request.
      • The bottom portion of the log shows the initiation of the request, the processing performed, and the various communications between Flow Designer and the request source.
  • Alert: For flows triggered by an alert activity, the alert properties, and their values.

To see new activity details for a flow, click the Refresh icon when it indicates that there is new activity with a blue dot. At least one trigger must be on your canvas before you can view associated flow activity.

To export an activity log to a .txt file, select a request in the list and click the Log tab, then click Export Log.