Handling Workflow Errors

In Conductor there are several ways to handle workflow failure automatically:

Set a compensation flow in the workflow definition.
Configure workflow status notifications by implementing Workflow Status Listener.

Set a compensation flow

You can configure a workflow to automatically run upon failure by adding the failureWorkflow parameter to your main workflow definition:

"failureWorkflow": "<name of your compensation flow>",

If your main workflow fails, Conductor will trigger this failure workflow.

By default, the following parameters will be passed to the failure workflow:

reason—The reason for workflow's failure.
workflowId—The failed workflow's execution ID.
failureStatus—The failed workflow's status.
failureTaskId—The execution ID for task that failed in the workflow.
failedWorkflow—The workflow execution JSON for the failed workflow.

You can use these parameters to implement compensation actions in the failure workflow, like notification alerts or clean-up.

Example

Here is a sample failure workflow that sends a Slack message when the main workflow fails. It posts the reason and workflowId to enable relevant teams to debug the failure:

{
  "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_>",
          "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",
}

Implement a Workflow Status Listener

Using a Workflow Status Listener, you can send a notification to an external system or an event to Conductor's internal queue upon failure. Here is the high-level overview for using a Workflow Status Listener:

Set the workflowStatusListenerEnabled parameter to true in your main workflow definition:
```
"workflowStatusListenerEnabled": true,
```
Implement the WorkflowStatusListener interface to plug into a custom notification or eventing system upon workflow failure.