Troubleshooting flow issues

As a tenant administrator, refer to the following information to understand common flow issues and to prevent or resolve the issues by applying the required corrective actions. Additionally, use the following troubleshooting methods:

Method	Purpose
Use the flow timeline	Use the Timeline section of BMC Helix Integration Studio to view all activities that are performed with a flow (such as flow update or flow publish). In the flow timeline, view the list of all flow runs and related error messages.
Use the debugger	If a flow run fails, and you need more information than is available in the flow timeline, set the debug mode for the required flow. The debugger shows what data is being passed and what errors occur during the flow run.
Use the Send Error Notification catalog flow	BMC Helix Integration Studio provides the out-of-the box Send Error Notification catalog flow that is available in your tenant by default. Use this flow to receive email notifications in your SMTP email account whenever a flow error occurs in BMC Helix Integration Studio.

Common flow issues

The following table lists common flow issues, possible causes of the issues, and corrective actions to prevent or resolve the issues.

Issue	Possible causes	Corrective actions
A flow does not run	The site used by the connector configuration is down.	Start Integration Controller for the reference site.
	The third-party service is not available.	The flow run produces an error and automatically retries the target action every 5 minutes. Information about the error is displayed in flow timeline. If the service becomes available during this time, the flow run is automatically resumed. If the service does not become available, wait for the third-party service to resume, or file a support ticket with the third-party service provider.
	The flow is not approved.	Have an admin user approve the flow.
A flow runs, but does not receive any records	The application account does not have the required access.	Verify the application account credentials.
A flow runs, but does not receive any records	For a period of time, the application time skew prevents polling of the records.	Correct the time on the reference system. Use Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize the clock.
A flow runs and receives records, but no records are passed	Conditions specified for receiving data are not correct.	Specify the correct conditions to receive data.
A flow timeline displays errors	The triggers or actions have invalid parameters specified or mapped.	Validate the specified parameters for triggers. Validate the values mapped from the source for actions.
	The application account does not have a required access.	Verify the application account credentials.
	In actions, the required fields mapped from a source have empty values.	Map values from fields that always have values, or hard code values for the required fields.

To use the flow timeline for troubleshooting flow issues

In BMC Helix Integration Studio, navigate to My Flows and select the required flow.
In the flow profile, click the Timeline tab, as shown in the following illustration:
Use one or more of the following options to find the information you need:
- Use the Interval filter to view the records for the following time periods: Today, Week, Month, or All.
  Records that are older than seven days are displayed in the aggregated view, and include all the flow events for a day summarized in one record, as shown in the following illustration:
- Use the Type filter to select the Errors only records if you want to look up only error messages. Errors that occur during the flow run are displayed as shown in the following illustration:
To see the error details, click Show more.

Important

The error types and messages depend on the connector that failed to respond appropriately during the flow run.

To use the debugger for troubleshooting flow issues

Important

You cannot debug a flow in the following cases:

If a flow is in the Paused, Inactive, or Pending status.
If a flow is already running or already being debugged.
if a type of a source connector is the listening type.

In BMC Helix Integration Studio, navigate to My Flows and select a flow that you want to debug.
In the flow profile, click the debug mode button, as shown in the following illustration:

The debug messages for the selected flow are displayed as shown in the following example:
Important
The debug messages are read-only; however, you can copy and paste them if you want to use this information for further analysis and troubleshooting.

To use the Send Error Notification catalog flow

In BMC Helix Integration Studio, navigate to Catalog.
Under the Notification category, select the Send Error Notification flow.
In the flow profile, click Use This Flow.
Click Next.
If you have not configured a user account for the SMTP Email connector earlier, add a user account.
Select the values for the field mappings.
Click OK.
The flow is available on your My Flows page and runs automatically to send an email notification to your SMTP email account whenever a flow error occurs in BMC Helix Integration Studio.

For more information about using catalog flows, see Publishing-or-using-flows.

For more information about using the Integration Service connector in flows, see Out-of-the-box-connectors.