Handling Errors

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

Set failureWorkflow in Workflow Definition

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

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": "conductor@example.com",
  "timeoutPolicy": "ALERT_ONLY",
}

Set workfowStatusListenerEnabled

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.