Monitor workflow execution

This article describes how to use observability data to monitor workflow run and schedule execution.

Audits

All NerdGraph mutation calls produce audit records that you can query in NrAuditEvent in the customer account.

WorkflowRun

SELECT actionIdentifier, actorId, actorType, description
FROM NrAuditEvent 
WHERE targetType = 'workflow_run'
SINCE 1 hour ago

WorkflowSchedule

SELECT actionIdentifier, actorId, actorType, description
FROM NrAuditEvent 
WHERE targetType = 'workflow_schedule'
SINCE 1 hour ago

Events

All workflow runs emit WorkflowAutomationEvent data in NRDB in the customer account that started or scheduled the workflow.

Workflow runs store event data in the WorkflowAutomation namespace.

WorkflowAutomationEvent schema

The following table describes the attributes in each WorkflowAutomationEvent event.

Attribute	Type	Description
`timestamp`	EpochMillisecond	Event timestamp
`type`	WORKFLOW \| STEP	Type of event
`status`	STARTED \| COMPLETED \| FAILED \| TIMED_OUT \| STOPPED	Status associated with the event
`definitionName`	String	Workflow definition name associated with this workflow run
`definitionVersion`	String	Workflow definition version associated with this workflow run
`definitionScopeType`	GLOBAL \| ORGANIZATION \| ACCOUNT	Workflow definition scope type associated with this workflow run
`definitionScopeId`	String	Workflow definition scope ID associated with this workflow run
`definitionEntityGuid`	String	Workflow definition entityGuid associated with this workflow run
`userId`	Int	New Relic's user ID that started the workflow
`runId`	UUID	Unique ID of the workflow run
`durationMillisecond`	EpochMillisecond	Duration for COMPLETED, FAILED, or TIMED_OUT events
`stepName`	String	Customer-given step name in the workflow
`stepType`	ACTION \| LOOP \| SWITCH \| STATE	Type of step that generated this event
`stepActionName`	String	Fully qualified name of the action
`stepActionVersion`	Int	Version of the action

The stepType attribute has the following values:

ACTION: Executes an action from the catalog
LOOP: Iterates over a collection
SWITCH: Evaluates conditions
STATE: Stores key/value pairs in the workflow's shared state

Example query

The following query returns all events for a specific workflow run:

SELECT *
FROM WorkflowAutomationEvent
where definitionName = 'json-parsing' and runId = '31c973d2-c669-4bd7-9b15-7e3a70a4a074'
SINCE 1 month ago

Diagram of WorkflowAutomationEvent schema

Logs

Optionally, you can start or schedule a workflow with a logLevel verbosity option. Logs go to the account that started or scheduled the workflow.

Logs include the following attributes:

workflowAutomation.name is the WorkflowDefinition name
workflowAutomation.version is the WorkflowDefinition version
workflowAutomation.runId is the Workflow runId
entityGuid is the WorkflowDefinition id

If a schedule occurrence started the workflow, the log entries also include workflowAutomation.scheduleId.

For Action step type, when using DEBUG, each action input adds an additional attribute to the log entry with the format workflowAutomation.inputs.<inputName>: <inputValue>.

For Action step type, when using TRACE, each action output adds an additional attribute to the log entry with the format workflowAutomation.outputs.<outputName>: <outputValue>.

Example NRQL query

You can query your log with the following NRQL query:

SELECT message FROM Log WHERE workflowAutomation.runId = '{run_id}' SINCE 3 hours ago

Diagram of log attributes for workflow runs

Besides workflowAutomation.runId, some other log attributes that can help with Log data querying are:

workflowAutomation.name
workflowAutomation.version

For scheduled runs, the log entries also include the workflowAutomation.scheduleId attribute.

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