Error Notifications for Data Shuttle

Amber Grossman

I recently starting using Data Shuttle (awesome!) but as a beginner, I made a few changes to column names and it shut down the automated offload. When I went back into Data Shuttle I could see a large red X telling me it wasn't running and the last time it did run. I would really appreciate an email coming to me when the refresh/offload doesn't go as planned. Even better would be a reason code or details in the email telling me what caused it to stop running. i.e. Offload MarTech did not run on May 18 at 11:30 due to column heading XYZ not being found.

TomG

We are starting to use data shuttle for some automated and scheduled upload and download workflows. Some of these take place well outside of working hours.

It would be great if there would be an option to have notifications (both in Smartsheet app and email) that could be turned on that would at a minimum provide notification if a scheduled workflow fails for any reason. It would be also be useful to be able to set the notifications to occur on successful execution. It would be a bonus to be able to notify multiple email accounts.

Then I and possibly others would have an email in their inbox each day and evening with confirmation that our scheduled workflows are successful.

With current functionality, I am having to log in and manually check the success of workflows at 6am and 7pm each day. It's not a big deal when it is a small number of jobs, but as our use increases, so will the time needed to manually check the status of the workflows.

Ken Armstrong

@Amber Grossman I agree 100% I have a lot of shuttles that are triggered by attachments that others provide. If something goes wrong I wont know till i go into data shuttle again which could be days. I have had to adjust my day to include a daily sign in to data shuttle.

aboere

In addition to notifications for failed data shuttles I would also like to receive a notification when it was only partially successful (yellow) as there is then also something I likely need to action.

Jack Parry

Data Shuffle Failure Notifications we shouldn't have to go into data shuffle or the sheet to know whether a data shuffle has failed...

NickG

I agree this is a needed feature. Failure notification is standard in every other enterprise software and service I use. I am actually shocked to find this basic feature is not already integrated into Datashuttle workflows. Datashuttle is supposed to be automated, set and forget, but if I have to login to check to see that it succeeded or failed everyday it is no longer doing a goodly portion of what we thought we were paying for.

Smartsheet is already capable of notifying users through email for other tasks, this needs to be added.

TomG

Hi @NickG ,

Thanks for the support on this idea, I appreciate it!! Best advice I can give you is reach out to as many Smartsheet users as possible and have them vote up the original post. The more votes, the more attention and increased likelihood that we'll see the feature added. I agree it seems like an easy win and low hanging fruit since it likely could leverage the existing workflow and notification features. Hopefully Smartsheet will see it as an easy win too.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Julie Fortney

I just ran into this problem today. A key offload workflow errored out, and all downstream workflows were no longer triggering. I am going to join the club with @Ken Armstrong and start reviewing the status of all my workflows daily. It's extra work, but it's better than the mess I have to sort out today.

Smartsheet, please add this feature to alert us when data shuttle workflows encounter errors!

Zeb Loewenstein

When DataShuttle workflows fail to run, the owner is not notified. Other premium Smartsheet applications (e.g. DataMesh) have this feature already.

Improve DataShuttle, so that the owner of upload / offload workflows is emailed when failure occurs.

Chrisjmz

How is this not a feature on Data Shuttle? Error/Success job notifications is the most basic feature an automation tool should have. Btw, TomG posted the same idea on Mar 23: 105556

Smartsheet team, please add this feature. These ideas have been around for 1 year with no answer. Error logs are already there, just add the ability to receive them through email :)

Julie Fortney

I started receiving Data Shuttle error notifications today! That isn't necessarily good news I suppose, but I'll look on the bright side - at least I know.

The downside is that like Data Mesh, apparently the workflows error out here and there on a regular basis. Usually it runs fine again the next time around.

Danielle Wilson

Excited to announce that Data Shuttle now includes error notifications!

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/121083/now-announcing-data-shuttle-error-notifications

TomG

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/433121#Comment_433121

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

@Danielle Wilson, I am so excited to see this and get it set up!!! I'm sure other Data Shuttle users will be doing backflips too! Please pass along my gratitude and complements to the team and those who made this a reality.

This may seem like a small thing, but I have a daily item on my to do list to review Data Shuttle logs and the time required to complete the checks is growing and I was expecting it to grow much more over the next few months. My daily integrity check would have gone from a few minutes to 30 minutes daily and with this feature it will go to 0! 😁

Thanks again and have a great afternoon!

Lawrence Lagalle

I love the new notification. The timing was a surprise as I was just complaining to my manager about the lack of notifications from Data Shuttle the day before.

I have been receiving them fairly often and when I go to look at the workflow it has already re-ran successfully in every case. I am curious if the new features has affected performance of the workflows or if the error logs are now picking up smaller errors that did not show in the run logs before.

TomG

@Lawrence Lagalle - glad to hear it's working for you. I've not received any notifications yet, but I've not had any jobs fail yet. I'm eager to see this work so I can stop my daily integrity checks for Data Shuttle jobs. Glad all your workflows ran successfully on their re-attempts. :)

Lawrence Lagalle

It's great but we are getting a lot of them. If you get an error every four hours for a workflow that is running every 15 mins but the rest of the time it runs fine, not really a big deal…other than it almost never happened BEFORE the notification system was put in place