Manage workflow notifications
Review and act on in-app notifications for scheduled workflows that keep failing, from the same inbox that holds your governance tasks.
Atlan sends workflow notifications to the admins of the connection the workflow belongs to: its admin users, groups, and roles. When a connection names no admins, Atlan sends them to your tenant admins, including workflow admins, instead. Only recipients see them in their inbox.
When a scheduled workflow keeps failing on an error you can fix, Atlan raises an in-app notification. It lands in the same inbox that holds your governance tasks, so there's nothing to set up and no separate surface to watch. For why Atlan flags workflows and when it pauses a schedule, see Keeping workflows healthy.
Workflow notifications aren't approval requests. They can't be approved or rejected. You resolve one by fixing the error, or by deciding to pause or remove the schedule yourself.
Where workflow notifications appear
To find your workflow notifications:
- From the top right of any screen in Atlan, click the Inbox icon.
- In the inbox, switch to the Assigned to me tab. Workflow notifications appear alongside your tasks, newest first and grouped by date.
- (Optional) Filter by status: Open, Actioned, Resolved, or Archived.
- (Optional) Set Group by to Workflows to bucket notifications by the workflow that raised them.
A few things to expect:
- Workflow notifications never appear under Created by me. Atlan raises them, not a person.
- Selecting a request type filter hides workflow notifications, because a notification has no request type.
- The inbox dot stays on while a notification is open. Workflow notifications have no read flag, so opening one doesn't clear the dot. Acting on it or resolving it does.
What workflow notifications show
Select a notification to open its preview. The preview shows:
- Headline: the app and connection the workflow belongs to, and whether a pause is already scheduled for it.
- Details: the failure summary, written when Atlan raised the notification and kept current as the failures continue. It covers how many runs have failed in a row and the error category, the error message from source, the suggested action, the date Atlan pauses the schedule if the error persists, and when the workflow last succeeded. A line Atlan can't fill is left out, and the error message and suggested action are each shortened to fit.
- Workflow: the workflow name, linking to its profile, with its schedule and connector.
- Preflight check results: shown when there are results to show. For more information, see What are preflight checks?.
- Runs: recent runs, and a warning when the next scheduled run is expected to fail.
- Resolution options: how to resolve the notification, on notifications still open.
Notification statuses
Workflow notifications use their own statuses, not the Approved and Rejected statuses that governance tasks use.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open | Atlan has raised the notification and nobody has acted on it yet. |
| Actioned | Someone acted on it, and Atlan still has to confirm the result on the next run. |
| Resolved | A run succeeded, so the workflow is healthy again. |
| Archived | Closed. Atlan paused the schedule, or the workflow, its schedule, or its connection no longer exists. |
Act on workflow notification
To resolve an open workflow notification:
- From the top right of any screen in Atlan, click the Inbox icon.
- In the inbox, from the Assigned to me tab, select the workflow notification.
- Under Choose how you'd like to resolve it, either:
- Click Edit configuration, the recommended option. This opens the workflow's Config tab, where you can correct the credential, the host, or whatever else the error names. Saving the configuration moves the notification to Actioned.
- Click Pause or remove the schedule, which isn't recommended, because pausing leaves your catalog metadata to go stale while the error stays unfixed. Enter a reason, which is required, then click Pause runs to stop the schedule, or Remove schedule and confirm to drop it entirely. Pause runs isn't offered when the schedule is already paused.
After you act, the notification leaves Open and its resolution options disappear.
Editing the configuration moves the notification to Actioned, which isn't a finished state. Atlan re-checks the workflow on its next run: if that run succeeds, the notification moves to Resolved, and if it fails again, the notification returns to Open so the problem doesn't get lost.
When Atlan raises notification
Atlan raises one notification per run of failures, when it first flags the workflow as needing attention. It then keeps that same notification current rather than raising another, so a workflow that keeps failing doesn't fill your inbox.
The same notification carries the rest of the story:
- A run succeeds: the notification moves to Resolved.
- Atlan pauses the schedule: the notification moves to Archived. Recovering the workflow restores its schedule, but it doesn't reopen the notification. If the workflow starts failing again later, Atlan raises a new one.
- The workflow, its schedule, or its connection is deleted: the notification moves to Archived, because an automatic pause no longer applies to it.
Get notified on Slack or Microsoft Teams
In-app notifications reach every tenant with no setup. Slack and Microsoft Teams are opt-in additions. An Atlan admin sets a Workflows alert channel on the Slack or Microsoft Teams integration, and Atlan posts the same workflow notifications there. For the setup and its requirements, see Keeping workflows healthy.
Workflow notifications are separate from the Slack notifications you get for approvals and requests. For those, see Manage tasks.
Related
- Keeping workflows healthy: why Atlan flags workflows, which failures count, and when it pauses a schedule.
- Workflow center: where flagged and paused workflows appear, and the actions available to admins.
- Manage tasks: the governance requests and approvals that share this inbox.