Value Streams Debugger

Solve errors with Value Streams Debugger - it helps out to solve problems with value streams on your own.

Introduction

The Value Streams Debugger was created to help you find problems when you're running value stream. You can:

• See the status and metadata for running instances of a version of a value stream.

• See if an instance stopped at one point.

• Check the reason why it stopped.

• See at which exact step the value stream instance failed.

If you are using a complex value stream that involves subflows and embeds other value stream, you have to debug all the child value stream separately from the parent one.

Working with the debugger

To access the Value Streams Debugger:

1. Go to the OE module in Management Dashboard and open the Value Streams listing.

2. Choose the value stream that you want to check and click the Magnifier icon next to it.

You can also access the debug mode directly from the value stream by choosing the Go to Debugger option.

This shows you a list of all the process instances for the selected value stream. The debugger works for two separate views of your value stream instances:

• Test - whenever you run a test for your value stream it creates a new instance that can be later checked in the debug under Test toggle

• Published - this view shows all the instances of production value stream

• Instance ID - you can use the Instance ID or a request ID to filter the results and to find the specific instance that you want to check

  • Request ID is a webhook ID

  • Instance ID is an ID of the value stream instance

To find the request ID and Instance ID, go to your scenario in Make, open the history tab and choose the instance you want to check. The IDs are visible when you choose to view the scenario's module details.

• Start time and end time of the value stream instance run.

• Status of the instance - you can check if a process instance was finished, is running, failed or was terminated.

  • Finished - an instance of a value stream that ended, it means all the steps of the instance were successfully completed.

  • Running - an instance that is in progress, it can be processing some action at the moment, but it can also be in a paused state, waiting for a trigger event.

  • Failed - an instance of the value stream that was not completed and could not complete all the steps.

  • Terminated - an instance that was running but was stopped by a user.

• A value stream's Version of the instance - to check how versioning works in OE, see Versioning.

1. To open the debug mode, click on the value stream instance.

The debug mode is a read only page that shows each step of the value stream instance with detailed process logs. The logs allow you to see data flowing through the system up to the point where it stopped because of an error. The errors that you can see, are also the ones passed back by other systems, which may have contributed to the failure.

• For the triggers, you can check the logs of the event that took place.

• For process steps with Make scenarios, you can check the input and output logs, as well as the information about completion events.

You can use the debugger to move directly to a scenario that is linked to one process step. You don't have to search for the scenario in Make, it opens automatically from the value stream instance after you click on the Go to Scenario Logs button.

If there's an instance of an value stream that has stopped at one step, but the step shows a running status, you can navigate directly to this instance's Make scenario to address the problem immediately.

For every part of an instance the following statuses are possible:

• Triggers - waiting/received

• Process steps - running/finished

• Filtered - for the steps where filters are applied

• Pending - only at the beginning, during the initialization

Stuck value stream and a stuck instance

If value stream are stopped, they can be stuck either at a value stream level or at a running instance level.

• A stuck value stream means that a cause is at Make's scenario step and all of the value stream' instances are queued at the same place - at the same scenario step.

• A stuck value stream' instance is failing at a value stream' step showing the running status. The cause can be an error of a Make scenario which is a part of the value stream step, or an incomplete process.

To see why an value stream instance is failing you can go through the following steps:

1. Check the state of an process step in the debug mode and then move directly to Make scenario logs to see the details.

1. Check the scenario history in Make.

2. Go to Incomplete Processes (executions) to see the list of failed processes.

1. Open the details view, to see the scenario record and the reason for interruption.

To learn more about error handling in Make, see Receiving Alerts for Scenario Errors and Make's Errors documentation.

Replaying a step of a value stream

The debugger mode allows replaying a single step of a value stream instance. You can use the feature whenever you want to test a Make scenario added in a step, directly in the OE view. This helps you in testing separate scenarios without the need to run the entire process. The replay feature can be run for all the steps that are built with Make scenarios and are in a running or finished status. However, it cannot be used for the triggers.

Whenever you replay a step, its logs are updated with the latest results, and the run is visible in Make's scenario history. Additionally, in the debugger logs for the particular step, you can see a replayid in the Input data. The ID helps in identifying the replay run when needed. The outcome of the replayed step is a part of the whole process context.

Replaying a single step of a value stream does not create a new running value stream instance.

Termination of a running instance

If you need to stop your running value stream instance, you can do that with the terminate button. As a safety precaution, you have to copy the instance's name and enter it in the confirmation before the system terminates the instance.