Historical step data for Flow Execution Extension and CaseEntity

denhan

Hello,

I'm working in a team with a dedicated tester role. When a bug is discovered in testing, I need to figure out what happened to the process for it to land in an erroneous state. That is, I need to get a historical view of a Flow Execution Extension or CaseEntity.

So far, I've explored the build-in reports in the "Flow Management" Dashboards, as they provide the most detailed information about the steps a flow has been through. My current understanding is that step data (Historical and Current) from the "FlowStepReport" report only contains data for flows containing an assignment. From what i gather, this is due to Decisions "snapshotting" a flow when "shelving" it.

Just as with the debugger logging, I'm looking for a way to get a more detailed view of every step a process folder has been through, not only steps related to an assignment. This would help me debug flow runtime errors in a way that I can recreate the bug on a different environment.

I'm keen to implement extensive logging, using the "log step" with a custom tag (e.g. UniqueProcessId) and use the Project Health Logs to get a better overview.

What is your experience debugging flows and processes, which wasn't run with an attached debugger?

Sumanjana_Decisions

Hi Denhan,

If your sole purpose is testing and finding the bugs with limited data, then go with the Global debugger. This will record all the flow triggered at that point in time and provide you with input and output for each step in the flow, Similar to the debugger. But you might notice some performance issues when a global debugger is turned on. Kindly turn this off when after running the required flow.

Enabling Auditing is the alternative to tracking the changes made to the data of the data structure.

Using the log step is suggested when you wish to have more details than merely tracking the changes.

Refer to the following documents:

https://documentation.decisions.com/v8/docs/en/global-debugger

https://documentation.decisions.com/docs/enabling-auditing

denhan

Hi Sumanjana,

Thank you for your quick response.

The global debugger is great when I am troubleshooting a flow or process. However, I am looking for a way to retrace the steps a process took to get to a certain point. I will use an example to help me clarify my need.

• A Tester sends me a UniqueProcessId and says that this process has landed in a state called "Exception".
• I now need to figure out why the ProcessFolder ended in the "Exception" state.
• I want to get an overview of all the steps the process has been through to enlighten my troubleshooting.
• I cannot use the global debugger now, since the process has already failed.
• I would like a detailed log of inputs and outputs of steps in flows related to the process.

I am merely looking to figure out what Decisions offers out-of-the-box in terms of troubleshooting and perhaps learn what the community does to handle similar situations.