Observability
Alerting an owner without creating an alert storm
Make workflow failure alerts actionable, group related records and escalate urgent work without flooding owners.
Desk
Desk Reliability
Examines error handling, duplicate prevention and the operational signals that show a workflow is healthy.
Data Mapping
Batching records without losing individual failures
Use batches while tracking each record’s success, failure or unknown outcome and retrying only appropriate entries.
Observability
Building a workflow health dashboard
Lay out outcomes, backlog and execution signals with clear definitions, data freshness and routes to affected records.
![How to choose the right idempotency key for an event: Keep the same idempotency key for retries of one action; use a new key for a new action.; Write: one [effect] for each [identity], e.g. one standard invoice per approved order.; Check stability, uniqueness, scope and lifetime; include tenant ID for tenant-scoped IDs. Choosing an idempotency key for an event](/covers/choosing-an-idempotency-key-for-an-event-640.webp?v=39704930)
Error Handling
Choosing an idempotency key for an event
Choose a stable idempotency key that recognises retries without blocking a legitimate new event or action.
Error Handling
Comparing workflow versions before release
Compare workflow triggers, decisions, data, actions and recovery settings, including configuration outside a platform's version view.
Workflow Design
Designing reliable workflows between business applications
Plan a cross-application workflow around a confirmed business outcome, clear data ownership, safe recovery and an operator who can resolve exceptions.
Error Handling
Distinguishing repeated events from legitimate new actions
Tell redelivered events from genuinely new actions using both event identity and the identity of the business effect.
Error Handling
Expiring an approval request that receives no response
Set a business deadline, close an unanswered approval through a controlled transition and prevent late responses from authorising an action.
Error Handling
Handling API throttling with controlled retries
Handle API throttling with provider retry timing, shared pacing, bounded attempts and a clear failure route.
Data Mapping
Handling changes to a record while approval is pending
Classify edits to a record under review, preserve the terms shown and prevent stale approval from authorising changed terms.
Error Handling
Handling deleted records during synchronisation
Set delete and restore rules for paired records, check actual deletion signals and prevent an unwanted record from reappearing.
Error Handling
Idempotency and duplicate prevention
Define idempotent workflow actions, stable keys and safe retry behaviour to prevent duplicate business effects.
Data Mapping
Identifying workflows that run without producing useful changes
Classify no-change workflow runs, find avoidable usage and protect useful checks before reducing execution.
Observability
Measuring the delay between trigger and completed action
Measure workflow delay from source event to confirmed destination action, including queue and retry time.
Error Handling
Preventing duplicate invoices after a workflow retry
Protect invoice creation across workflow retries, lost responses and concurrent workers using a stable business identity.
Observability
Rebuilding a sync after a prolonged outage
Check replay availability, inventory both systems when history is incomplete, reconcile differences and restart record syncing.
Error Handling
Recording enough context to diagnose a failed workflow
Capture the IDs, attempted action, known outcome and safe error context needed to investigate a failed workflow.
Error Handling
Resolving conflicting updates from two systems
Identify competing record edits, choose a field-level rule and apply the resolution without overwriting another change.
Error Handling
Resuming a workflow after a service interruption
Use the last confirmed outcome and destination records to resume an interrupted workflow without blindly repeating work.
Error Handling
Rolling back a workflow without replaying completed actions
Redirect new workflow starts, classify affected outcomes and recover unfinished items without repeating confirmed external actions.
Error Handling
Rotating credentials without breaking scheduled workflows
Credential rotation succeeds when the old secret is revoked and every dependent workflow still runs as intended.
Error Handling
Routing failed records to an exception queue
Keep failed workflow records diagnosable and owned, then check retention, destination state and replay safety before recovery.
Error Handling
Safely retiring a workflow that other systems still use
Find a workflow’s remaining consumers, plan a cutover, settle pending and unknown work, and decommission it with an owner.
Error Handling
Separating retryable failures from invalid data
Decide whether a failed workflow record needs a bounded retry, data correction or reconciliation of an uncertain write.
Observability
Setting budget alerts for high-volume integrations
Choose usage and spending alerts for busy integrations, with plan limits, response owners and delayed-billing caveats.
Observability
Testing an inbound webhook with sample events
Plan sample webhook events, inspect sender and receiver records, and check downstream outcomes separately from receipt.
Error Handling
Testing duplicate prevention before production
Test duplicate prevention with lost responses, concurrent delivery, changed inputs and legitimate new actions.
Observability
Tracking successful outcomes rather than execution counts
Define eligible work, confirm destination results and calculate outcome and on-time rates without counting retries as extra successes.
Error Handling
Validating transformed data before sending it onward
A workflow can transform a payload successfully and still send the wrong business value.
Error Handling
Workflow error handling
Classify workflow failures, limit safe retries, preserve unresolved records and confirm the destination outcome.
Observability
Workflow monitoring and observability
Monitor confirmed workflow outcomes, spot missing or overdue work and use execution signals to investigate the cause.
Observability
Workflow testing and deployment
Plan workflow tests, verify live connections, compare versions and release with a recovery path for completed external actions.