Tines Academy › Lesson

Check workflows through evidence

A workflow can finish without an error and still get the result wrong. Learn to read a workflow's run history, check what each step received and produced, and trace a problem back to where it started.

Objective: Use a workflow's run history to confirm what it did and find where a problem started.

Looking right isn't proof

When teams start building, you'll hear "it works" a lot. Usually it does. But a list can look great and still show the wrong records, and a message can be sent to the right channel while missing the one detail people need. A workflow can finish every step it ran without a single error and still not do what it was built to do.

The only way to know is to look at what actually happened. Every time a workflow runs, Tines 3B keeps a record of it: which steps ran, how long they took, whether they succeeded, and what each one produced. That record is your evidence.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to read a workflow's run history, confirm what it did, and trace a problem to the step where it started.

Ask three questions

Whenever someone asks you to check a workflow, start with the evidence, not the result screen. Ask three questions of any run:

Did it succeed, and did the steps you expected to run actually run?

What did each step receive, and what did it produce?

Does the final result match what the workflow was built to do?

The marketing team's review request tracker posts a summary to Slack for every new request. A reviewer tells you the summaries have started arriving without a deadline. Let's look at how the evidence leads to the cause.

Follow the evidence

Switch to your Tines 3B tenant for the hands-on parts of this learning path. If you don't have one yet, you can set one up here.

One habit to start: rerunning a workflow can repeat what it did the first time, including sending messages and creating records. Use sample data and a test destination while you're learning.

Use the workflow you built in Fundamentals, or any workflow you can open. Check that you're on the branch you want to inspect, and bear in mind that details from older runs may no longer be available.

Open the workflow without selecting a step, then select the Runs tab. If there are no runs yet, run the workflow once and come back. If you can't run it, pick a workflow that already has runs.

Select the most recent run and read the header: when it ran, how it ended, how long it took, and how many steps ran.

Hover over each bar in the waterfall chart and watch the matching step highlight in the map.

Select one bar to open that step's detailed view. Look at what the step received and what it produced.

Compare the final result with what the workflow is meant to do.

Evidence checklist

Hold any run up against what the workflow was built to do:

The information. Is it working from the right details, or something close but not quite?

The logic. Did the rules and conditions do what was meant, especially at the edges?

The result. Does what came out match what was asked for, detail by detail?

The definition of done. By the builder's own definition of "worked," did it?

Make one check and verify it

Pick one of these and use the Runs tab to answer it:

Which step took the longest in the most recent run, and was it waiting or running for most of that time?

If the workflow has a failed run, which step failed first?

If the workflow has a form on its page, try leaving one detail blank and submitting. If it goes through, find that run and look at what each step received. If submission is blocked, note where that check happened: was it stopped on the page, or did a step receive it and reject it?

Then check yourself. Did you find the answer in the evidence, without guessing from the result screen? Could you point a colleague to the exact step? If so, you're reading runs the right way.

What to do if something still feels fuzzy

A succeeded run means the steps that ran finished without a reported error, and each step's details show whether they did the right thing. Next, you'll zoom out to see what needs attention across all your workflows at once.