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Workflow Failure

When a workflow fails, there are 2 ways to handle the exception.

failureWorkflow​

In your main workflow definition, you can configure a workflow to run upon failure, by adding the following parameter to the workflow:

"failureWorkflow": "<name of your failure workflow>",

When there is an issue with your workflow, Conductor will start the failure workflow. By default, three parameters are passed:

  • reason
  • workflowId: use this to pull the details of the failed workflow.
  • failureStatus

The reason parameter will, by default, have text similar to Workflow is FAILED by TERMINATE task: 84eb2dcb-ebfd-11ec-b770-12aa5996f545. If a workflow fails via a TERMINATE task, the terminateReason parameter in the TERMINATE task can be used to override the default reason text.

Example​

Here is a sample failure workflow that sends a message to Slack when the workflow fails. It posts the reason and the workflowId into a slack message - to allow for quick debugging:

{
  "name": "shipping_failure",
  "description": "workflow for failures with Bobs widget workflow",
  "version": 1,
  "tasks": [
    {
      "name": "slack_message",
      "taskReferenceName": "send_slack_message",
      "inputParameters": {
        "http_request": {
          "headers": {
            "Content-type": "application/json"
          },
          "uri": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/<Unique Slack generated Key goes here>",
          "method": "POST",
          "body": {
            "text": "workflow: ${workflow.input.workflowId} failed. ${workflow.input.reason}"
          },
          "connectionTimeOut": 5000,
          "readTimeOut": 5000
        }
      },
      "type": "HTTP",
      "retryCount": 3
    }
  ],
  "restartable": true,
  "workflowStatusListenerEnabled": false,
  "ownerEmail": "doug.sillars@orkes.io",
  "timeoutPolicy": "ALERT_ONLY",
}

Example Use Case​

The check_address use case has several terminate tasks that run a failure workflow. The address_error task overrides the terminateReason parameter.

Set workflowStatusListenerEnabled​

When this is enabled, notifications are now possible, and by building a custom implementation of the Workflow Status Listener, a notification can be sent to an external service. More details.