Get More Visibility on Your Flows With the Activity Stream With Unito's activity stream, you can get a clearer picture of what's going on with your flows, change by change. Here's how it works. Serah Ladhani
Table of contents:
What is the activity stream?
Whenever a Unito flow syncs a change between tools, this is logged as an activity. With the activity stream, you can see activities across your workspace for the past 24 hours. Each activity will show you a host of information, including:
A timestamp, so you know when the activity happened.
The activity type, which will tell you if we synced a new comment, an updated field, or the creation of a brand new item.
Updated fields, listing exactly which fields the activity changed.
Status, showing whether the activity was synced successfully or not.
Links to the original work item, the updated work item, as well as the blocks of work where they live.
A link to the associated Unito flow.
A link to the associated Unito workflow, if any.
With the activity stream, you can drill down on specific updates with a ton of useful information. You're also able to search for specific activities by flow, block of work, workflow, and so on. You can use the activity stream to keep an eye on your workflows, but it's an especially powerful tool for troubleshooting problems.
How to troubleshoot your flows with the activity stream
When you're building a flow that has the power to affect your work, you want to make sure you get everything right. With the activity stream, you have access to a play-by-play of each flow. You can pair the activity stream with our three ways to test your flow for advanced testing, or use it to figure out what's going wrong with an already existing flow. Here are a few examples of common Unito issues and how you can use the activity stream to troubleshoot them.
A work item is syncing unexpectedly
With the activity stream's search function, you can pick out a specific work item and see all changes made to it. Here's how:
Grab the work item URL and paste it into the activity stream search bar. This will show you all the activities related to that task.
Look under the updated fields column. By looking through the list of updated fields, you might find some you didn't want mapped. You can then go into your flow to fix this.
You can also follow the link under the original item column to see where the activity originated from.
Correcting failed activities
Through the activity stream, you can see all attempts Unito makes at syncing your changes. If you see a string of failed activities, this is a good sign that something needs troubleshooting. By keeping an eye on the activity stream, you can spot these problems early.
Sometimes, a string of failed activities means there's high traffic in your tool, meaning it'll just take a bit longer for changes to sync. Or maybe the tool itself is experiencing issues, and you can take the opportunity to check that tool's status page for outages.
Either way, the failed status is typically temporary. In most cases, Unito will keep trying until the change goes through. But if that doesn't happen, you can grab the activity ID for a failed activity at the far left of the activity stream. Share this with our product specialists, and we'll figure out the problem with you.
Confirming that your flow is actively syncing changes
Do you find yourself jumping between your tools to make sure work items are syncing? With the activity stream, you can get that information in one place. No more tab-hopping. Just find the flow in question, search for it in the activity stream's search bar, and you'll see all synced changes for the past 24 hours. If there aren't any activities at all, you'll know your changes aren't syncing. If you see a list of activities with the failed status, there's probably an issue with your tool or a slowdown in service. If it's the former, here are some steps you can try.
Click on Live activity stream. This will show you activities in real-time. If nothing shows up, try the next step.
Check that auto sync is turned on, or click on sync now if you're using a manual flow.
Check that Only sync new tasks isn't turned on. With this setting, your flow won't touch any historical data. Either create a new work item or turn this setting off.
Activity stream availability
Currently, the availability stream is only available for Company and Enterprise plans. If your workspace is on one of these plans, you can easily access the feature by clicking on Activity Stream within the app. If you're on a Personal or Team, just reach out to us and we can talk upgrades!
What's next?
Learn how to fix common Unito issues.
Learn about common error messages and their fixes.
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