Logging Errors with Non Workato Users

[jessica-lie]

[Dec 22, 2020] Brian Haskins (Business System Architect at TeleTracking) posted:

I wanted to see what others have done with log aggregation. 

Here is the Scenario:

We currently have Salesforce, NetSuite, and Concur Jobs setup. Different groups are responsible for each product. When one job fails with a data error that I cannot correct, it sends an email to a error bucket. I then forward the email out to the appropiate group. I have a property setup in Prod and Test with an email address.

I currently have these dumping into one email bucket but have been asked to separate those out so those users can fix the data rather than me forwarding on an email. These users do not have access to Workato.  I do not think properties make sense here as it may seem non expandable.

1) Lookup table with email addresses/Teams channel/Slack channels based on Job name. This would look at the job name and based on the name, send to the appropriate direction.

2) External logging system. Lot of work here but could customize it.

What have others done?

[jessica-lie]

[Dec 22, 2020] Joe Blanchett (Product Manager, Finance Systems at Seat Geek) replied:

Hey Brian -

I use a lookup table for this “Error Message Director”. The only downside is maintaining it when users leave has to be done by Workato Admins if roles change. I use subsidiary ID as the primary key, then additional columns to map different notification types to emails and slack channels. E.g. expense report errors, vendor invoice errors, etc go to different email addresses based on what subsidiary the error is for. Subsidiary based notifications don’t work across the board, but I use it for integrations between Coupa-NetSuite and SFDC-NetSuite.  

[jessica-lie]

[Dec 22, 2020] Gavin Hay (President and CTO of Dispatch Integration) replied:

We employ a number of strategies, but in one scenario we send both success and error level events to an elasticsearch index which is then dashboarded using our forked version of Grafana for self service use by external (to Workato) consumers. Alerts are also all routed through a help desk system that is responsible for the actual end user alerts. This decouples Workato from the destinations (users) and removes recipe configuration churn.

[jessica-lie]

[Jan 5, 2021] Ryan Stewart (Systems Engineer at Playstation, Sony) replied:

Another simple approach you might try is adding error handling to all the scripts and using Workato recipe ops to send alert emails to the appropriate contacts.

As an example, you can create an error handling recipe for NetSuite which will gather whatever details you want to include in the trigger and email the NetSuite Admins. Best to send the email to a DL so you don't need to keep up with individual contacts in the recipe.

Encapsulate your entire NetSuite recipe in a try catch block and trigger the error handling recipe for NetSuite in the catch action, including whatever details you want. Now when there is any otherwise unhanded error in the recipe it will trigger the NetSuite error handling recipe which will email the NetSuite admins.

[jessica-lie]

[Jan 5, 2021] John Zink from Bain Capital replied:

We have a lookup list that is based on folder.  If a recipe in that folder fails, it emails slacks and/or sends a text based on the settings in the lookup list.