Error handling and monitoring

SUMMARY

• Error monitoring steps check action completion and allow retrying or skipping to next steps when errors occur.
• Conditional actions (IF condition steps) allow you to validate input data to prevent errors.
• Stop actions halt the recipe when issues arise, reducing unnecessary operations.
• Custom error emails send notifications with error details, including a descriptive filename attachment and relevant job and recipe URLs.

Ensure that your recipes run smoothly by implementing effective error-handling practices. Use the handle errors step to check if an action block completed successfully. Validate your datapills with conditional actions and raise exceptions with the stop action step if the incoming data is not properly formatted. Surface useful alerts with detailed and useful information about the error.

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Error handling best practices

This section covers best practices for building recipes that handle errors. Refer to the Error Handling Example (opens new window) recipe that demonstrates error handling best practices.

1. Include a handle errors step.
2. Validate datapills with Conditional actions.
3. Raise exceptions with the Stop action.
4. Configure custom error emails with information about the error that occurred.

Example error handling recipe

Handle errors step

Wrap all the actions within your recipe in a handle errors step to monitor for errors. This step consists of an error monitoring block and an on-error block, enabling Workato to handle all errors uniformly.

To add a handle errors step, click + Add step, then select Handle errors.

Handle errors step

Nest all recipe steps in a Monitor actions for error block. This setup allows Workato to watch these actions for errors. If any step within the block throws an error, configure the recipe to retry the failed steps up to three times.

Alternatively, select Do not retry to proceed to the next steps immediately.

Set up auto-retry

If the recipe still fails after retries, it performs the steps nested in the On error block.

MONITOR API RECIPE REQUEST TIMEOUTS

If an API recipe includes a Handle errors step, the Monitoring block does not trigger when the API request times out, terminating the recipe job. Consequently, actions in the On error block are not executed.

On error datapills

When you add a handle errors step to your recipe, Workato generates error-related datapills if an error occurs. This enables you to configure your recipe to handle errors differently depending on the error type, recipe step, or app causing the error.

For example, if an error occurs with a particular app, you can use conditional actions to stop the recipe job. Alternatively, contact your app administrator for further assistance.

Workato generates the following on error datapills:

Datapill	Description	API name
Error type	The type of error that occurred.	For example: error[type] and error[error_type]
Error message	A message describing the error.	For example: error[message], error[error_message], and error[msg]
Retry count	The number of times Workato tried to rerun the actions in the handle errors block.	For example: error[retry_count] and error[retries]
Error UUID	The Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of the error. This is a 128-bit label used to identify the error. This key is optional and only displays a value if you provide the key.	For example: error[uuid] and error[error_id]
Errored step number	The step on which the error occurred.	For example: error[line_number], error[step_number], and error[step]
Errored app	The app that caused the error.	For example: error[adapter], error[app], and error[application]
Errored action	The action on which the error occurred.	For example: error[action], error[action_name], and error[operation]

Conditional actions

Prevent errors by checking input values to key actions in your recipe, such as when writing to a destination system. Use conditional actions to validate incoming data and stop actions to end or fail a recipe job early, reducing unnecessary processing time and API calls. Add conditional actions by clicking + Add step and then IF condition.

IF condition

Stop job action

Use conditional actions to validate data early in the recipe, then use the Stop job action to halt the recipe when issues are detected. This approach improves recipe efficiency and minimizes unnecessary processing or excess API calls. The following example stops the recipe when the search object step does not yield results.

Stop job action

Custom error emails

Configure Workato to send custom error emails when an error occurs using the Email by Workato - Send email action. We recommend attaching the error details in a file named errors.txt and including important information such as the recipe URL, job URL, and job time.

To access the Recipe URL, Job URL, and Job created at datapills, expand the Recipe data menu and navigate to the Properties datatree.

Set up custom error emails

Map on error datapills to customize your error emails with the error type, message, and source (recipe step, action, or app).

Map datapills into your email message to surface important error-related details