Power Automate Error Monitoring

[automateall]

Looking to systemically track cloud and desktop flow errors into a SharePoint or database for team to follow-up and address flow failures.  I know PA provides monitoring online through PA monitoring.  
https://make.powerautomate.com/ > Monitor
Cloud flow activity > Failures
Desktop flow activity > Errors

However, this doesn't allow team to share RCA, Resolution notes (error closure), and flow history.

From enterprise solution how can this be done systemically?  Anyone have solution they have successfully implemented?

Again, Solution needed for both Cloud and desktop flows.

[trice602 · Accepted solution]

HI @automateall ,

I'll share a couple things I am doing that has helped me.

Cloud flows:  configure your run-after action settings and turn on failures and timeouts, also capture the error messages.  Right now I am emailing myself so I can see them immediately and has been working well (but could go into a List with status and on-going notes).

Desktop flows:  I have a subflow on all my desktop flows that is launched when my onBlock catches an error.  In my sub flow, I am closing applications, windows, browsers, logging out of things open, etc,  but most importantly, I am taking a snapshot of the desktop to help me see what actually occurred and the current variable values if relevant (works great most of the time).  If you are running unattended flows, you can also capture the last error message and send it back to cloud flow and include in your email notification.  I am saving all my error snapshots to a folder for any other developers to review OneDrive/SharePoint (also working well).

Obviously, it doesn't have to be an email, it could go into a List too but for me, what has worked is getting the notification immediately (plus use monitor and history, and flow access) and troubleshooting in real-time. To track history, notes, resolutions etc, implement managed solutions and document your flows well in your test environment.  Goes without saying, if you bullet proof your production environment solutions, you should have a small list of errors to triage if you are using a good ALM strategy.

Please mark as a solution ✅ and/or give me a thumbs up 👍🏽 for replying and volunteering my time! 🎗️  Always glad to help! Tom ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Agnius]

For desktop flows, we generally use JSON logs on a plain text file stored locally on the machine, but then have ELK stack set up to retrieve, parse and store those logs. So, we can always monitor the logs of each flow during runtime, if needed. This applies not only to error logs, but also informational messages that we also log, which are intended to help debug issues when they appear.

The general idea for logging in Desktop flows is using the On block error action to add some rules when an error occurs, then using the Get last error action to get the error details. This action returns a lot of details that are usually enough to handle any system exception. But if you also want to log business exceptions, you will also need to set some log messages manually. And then you need a sub-flow that logs the message somewhere. As mentioned, we use JSON into a plain text file. But you can also easily push those logs to a database or a SharePoint list. Both are perfectly viable options in PAD.

As to cloud flows, I suggest reading this article: https://dev.to/wyattdave/exception-handling-in-power-automate-4c4h

It has some great suggestions on how to handle errors. It does have some mistakes in some of those expressions that doesn't always work (especially in more complex structures), but once you get the general idea, you can easily implement that yourself, too. And, instead of sending those messages to yourself via email, you can also push them to a database or a SharePoint list. These are also perfectly viable options in PA cloud, too.

We usually send those errors via email to our support mailbox that is shared between the team, or a shared mailbox at the client side, where the relevant people can all see it.

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