Investigating Workflow Runs

How to troubleshoot and debug workflow runs

If a workflow didn’t execute the way you expected it to, you can investigate what went wrong by viewing the history of workflow runs. You can do this from the Runs view or directly from the workflow editor.

Finding a run from the Runs view

Click Runs in the OpenOps main menu.

This opens the list of all runs across all your workflows, with the most recent runs shown first:

You can filter the list by workflow name, run status (succeeded, failed, paused, timeout, etc.), type (triggered, manual run, test run), or a date range:

When you’ve found a run you want to investigate, click on it. This will open the workflow editor in a view-only mode.

Alternatively, if a run is taking longer than expected or is stuck in a paused state, you can abort it by clicking the three-dot menu on the right and selecting Stop Run:

Finding a run from the workflow editor

If the workflow you want to investigate is already open in the workflow editor, click Run logs in the top menu:

In the Recent Runs pane that opens on the left, click a run that you want to investigate. Failed runs are marked with the ❌ icon:

This will open the selected run in the Run Details pane.

Investigating in the Run Details view

In the Run Details pane, each workflow step will display a ✅ or a ❌ to indicate its execution status.

Click on a failed step to see its inputs and outputs. Explore the outputs to view the error message:

To update the workflow to address the error, click Edit in the top-right corner of the workflow editor. This switches the editor from view-only mode, enabling you to select the problematic step and modify its properties.

Changing the default timeout

By default, OpenOps times out if a workflow runs for more than 10 minutes. This applies to both scheduled runs and test runs.

If you build long-running workflows, you may want to extend the default timeout. To do this, open the .env file in your OpenOps installation directory and add a new environment variable named OPS_FLOW_TIMEOUT_SECONDS. Set its value to the desired timeout in seconds — for example, 900 for 15 minutes or 3600 for 1 hour.

After making any changes to the .env file, restart the OpenOps containers:

sudo docker compose down
sudo docker compose up -d