Setting up Error Alerts on Nintex Workflows on Office 365

  • 27 November 2017
  • 16 replies
  • 68 views

Userlevel 4
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This solution allows you to set up workflow error alerts on Nintex Workflow for Office 365.

 

Author Palesa Sikwane
Long Description This is a little workaround that can assist you in setting up workflow error notifications on Nintex Workflow for Office 365 whenever a workflow gets Suspended.
Dependencies

Nintex Workflow 365

SharePoint Online

Compatibility

Nintex Workflow O365

Nintex Forms O365

Platform

Office 365

 


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What's up Ninsters???

 

Finally back home in the city of Johannesburg, and I've been working on all sorts of interesting things! I've put together a little video below showing you how using List Alerts in conjunction with the Workflow History List on Office 365 to allow you to get Workflow Error Notifications. 

 

 

Summary:

 

Step 1: Access the history list for the site you would like to set up Workflow Error Notifications:

 

Append the following to your Site URL:

/Lists/Workflow%20History

For example, if your site URL is https://example.sharepoint.com/sites/hr , then the appended URL appears as follows.

https://example.sharepoint.com/sites/hr/Lists/Workflow%20History 

NB: Taken from our Online Help File titled Monitoring workflow status and history


Step 2: Set up your Errored Workflows List View

Creating a view called Errored Workflows with the following configuration:

List View

List View

NB: This resulted in me getting a List View from my Workflow History for all the workflows that have any of the keywords which are put in the Description whenever a workflow gets suspended for whatever reason, sorted by the latest one at the top.

 

Step 3: Set up your list Alert:

From your Workflow History List set up an Alert from the ribbon

Setting up an Alert

SharePoint List Alert

Setting up alerts on a view

Step 4: Test this by running workflows that get suspended and throw an error message:

 

In my case I ran on of my buggy workflows:

 

Workflow Status

And I received the following Alert as anticipated:

SharePoint List Alert

And... that's it! Would love it if you guys have a crack at this, and share some of thoughts and experiences!

 

I wish you all a really great weekend!

 

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16 replies

Userlevel 6
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Awesome! Thank you, Palesa!  

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Oh! this is some dope sh**! I was just asking about this today

And the rap is sick! For Shizzle! Palesa

Badge +2

This is great Palesa!

Userlevel 4
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Thanks Tom!!  

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Hi ‌ this is great thanks. But what if the workflow suspends and no workflow history is recorded? 

Userlevel 4
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Hi ‌ thanks for your feedback, you got a good point here , this only works for some actions, i will be posting/updating this post with a list of actions that log to the history list when an error has occured.  

Badge +11

Hi Palesa

This only captures some of the errors in the workflow history list. Do you know if there is a comprehensive error list that we can tap into?

Userlevel 4
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Good day Joanne Morris‌ , thanks for the comment! unfortunately @ this stage we're limited to the type of errors we get pushed into the list due to relying on MS Workflow Manager on office 365. Hopefully in future releases we'll be able to capture more events

Thanks Palesa Sikwane for a good tip and a clear explanation.
Love the intro ;-)

Userlevel 4
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Thanks Pieter Kops

Thank you for providing this as it is great to notify when a item has been suspended, however in the example it provides and ID number which I'm assuming is the ID for the Workflow History list and not the item which the workflow is attached to. This still does not provide which item has suspended unless I am missing something.

I have also tried doing it but my history list already passed the threashold so even if i create view with above option it always throws below error.

 

This view cannot be displayed because it exceeds the list view threshold (5000 items) enforced by the administrator.

 

To view items, try selecting another view or creating a new view. If you do not have sufficient permissions to create views for this list, ask your administrator to modify the view so that it conforms to the list view threshold.
 
please help me how to create a view in this seneraio 
Userlevel 4
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Regarding suspended workflows:

 

One of our vtes @TomaszPoszytek 

  put a solution using MS flow https://poszytek.eu/en/microsoft-en/office-365-en/flow-en/discovering-suspended-workflows-with-microsoft-flow/ really great read for getting alerts on suspended workflows.. and it will be free seeing that its flow and uses OOTB functionality.

Userlevel 4
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@rahulbarua 

 

Regarding list view thresholds:

 

  • Do you know what you need to keep in your history? Reason I am asking is would purging or deleting the history list be an option?
Userlevel 4
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Hi guys m8 has a solution for getting alerts on suspended, terminated and error workflows check it out here https://www.workflowm8.com/

Userlevel 1
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how can this be applied to O365? the "/Lists/Workflow%20History" is empty for O365

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