A workflow needs attention

Every night we quietly rehearse each of your switched-on rules against a real record, without changing anything. If a rule cannot get through that rehearsal, it carries a red Needs attention label in the list and a panel underneath saying This workflow needs attention.

The rehearsal failed on the record used for that check. Other records may still run successfully: a missing recipient on one subscription does not establish that every reminder is failing.

What the panel tells you

Three things, in order:

1. 1Where it stops — the step that gives up, by name and position.
2. 2What is missing — in plain words, not the technical message. A field the step needs was left empty, or points at something that no longer exists.
3. 3What to change — under What to do, when we can be specific about it.

Technical detail opens the exact message the engine produced, if you want to send it to us.

Clearing it

Select Resolve issue to open Fix a reminder that has no recipient. Repair the record if it is missing data, or edit the workflow if its configuration is incomplete. The label does not disappear the moment you save — the next rehearsal clears it, and you can trigger one yourself from the automations page rather than waiting for the night.

The most common causes, all of them a step pointing at something that has since moved:

• A field the step writes to was renamed or deleted.
• A checklist item the step ticks no longer exists on that checklist.
• A step that looks a record up was never told which field to search on.
• A task or email step has nobody to send to, because the record it runs on has no owner or no address.

See "What a rule can do" for what each step needs before it will run.

Why you also got a message about it

The person who built the rule — or, if they have left, your administrators — gets one notification the first time a rule breaks. Only the first time: a rule you have decided to live with will not tell you again every night. If it is repaired and later breaks again, you hear about it again.

Some faults are ours rather than yours. Those still show the rule as not running, so you know it is not doing anything, but they say we are on it and give you nothing to change. You are not notified about those at all.

Where these messages arrive, and how to change that, is in What actually sends you a notification.

The Failing now label

This one comes from real runs rather than the nightly rehearsal. It appears when a rule keeps failing: three real runs in a row, or every run it has made since it was created. Hover it to see the last error and when the failures started.

A single failed run between good ones does not raise it. That is usually one record missing something, not a broken rule, so it only shows in the red failed count on the card. Open the rule's runs to see which record it was.

The label clears by itself the next time the rule runs successfully.

An amber dot is not this

A small amber dot means the opposite: we could not rehearse the rule at all, usually because you have no record yet of the type it triggers on. Nothing is wrong with it. Only the red label means broken.