Advanced flow - error condition for the whole flow

Ideas & Suggestions
1

One of the things I run into quite a few times is that an adv flow fails, but you don’t exactly know why. Quite a few cards have the option of logging an error condition with context, but you’d have to configure that for every card that can fail. And quite a few times, the actual device isn’t at fault but the app is.

Would it be possible to create a generic error function per flow that, for instance, would always output to the timeline (if configured) and that would catch all error messages?

I could imagine something like “error in flow ‘daily music’; source card ‘sonos - kitchen’; message ‘DEVICE GONE’ ” or something similar.

Or am I missing something and should I do this in a different way?

2

The app Flow Checker can detect if apps have stopped, b/c the flows involved will ‘break’. Dependable on the check interval, you’ll be informed in a minute. And much more checks with variables and stuff.
Check it out!

I’ve added log cards (f.i. Papertrails app) to every flow. What you can do is use this, or timeline cards, to join all error outputs to one card. Depending on the error, you’ll probably can find out where to look for the culprit.

1 Like
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Thanks Peter!

Those are good workarounds! But they are workarounds. It would be great if the error handling in adv flows would be a bit more extensive.

4

YW!
Agreed, but for me it is already way better compared to standard flows :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Because with them, there was just nothing… ing… ing… ingggg .
You had to add logcards yourself and I did. Now, adding logcards is a habit. And for me the Flowchecker app is really handy

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I had done this (one error notification card per advanced flow with all error outputs in the flow connected to that card) and it didn’t work. I had added all the different error tags in the same card (yes, every card has its own error tag!). This doesn’t work because if the error notification card is triggered, only 1 of these error tags is present and the rest are missing, causing the notification card to fail. Therefore, I reverted to having one error notification card per flow card. This works well and also allows a bit more granular error reporting (so you know where to look in your AF). To free up some of that precious real estate in my advanced flows, I overlayed all error notification cards so they seem like 1 card but it’s actually a stack of cards all in the same place.