Using the Flow DebuggerLast Updated: 02/10/2016 Introduced in Verision: 2.0 |
Flows can span multiple systems, such as POP, IMAP, Application Servers, and Database Servers, and may or may not involve an end user. A flow can run an approval process, check or send email, handle an incident, or turn on a server. To ensure the flow runs without errors, debugging is highly recommended throughout the development stages.
You can view how a flow transforms data using the Flow Debugger, which is accessible from the Flow Designer.
Because the debugger runs flows with additional processes to display contextual data for developers, the debugger should not be a used as a means for gauging a flow’s performance. To analyze how quickly a flow is performing and which steps may be producing bottlenecks, see our article on Troubleshooting Using the Profiler.
Example
To begin the debugging process, we click the Debug Flow link at the top of the Flow Designer.
For each step in the flow, the Debugger lists events on the Events tab, and provides details about each step’s success or failure and inputs and outputs in the Data tab. This tab also records when the step ran and how long it took for each step to complete.
By default, Decisions displays each step in a flow only once, so if the same step is iterated over multiple times, it will only appear in the debugger the first time it’s executed. To make a step appear in the debugger every time it is run, select the step in question and in the Debugging-Demo section of the Properties panel, change Handle In Debugger from “Default” to “Everytime”.
The Diagram tab provides a visual representation of the debugging processes and the outcome for each step. We can debug each step and catch errors before the flow is used. To pause the flow execution during debugging, click the pause icon in the upper left. To close out of debug, click the stop icon.
