If you’ve built a few automation recipes in Workato, you know errors aren’t just possible—they’re guaranteed. APIs flake out. Data isn’t what you expect. Someone changes permissions. Quiet failures turn into messy problems down the line. This guide is for folks who want their automations to be reliable, not just “working for now.” I’ll walk through what error handling in Workato actually looks like, how to set things up without making a tangled mess, and what’s worth your time (and what’s not).
Why error handling matters (and what happens if you ignore it)
Let’s be blunt: If you don’t handle errors on purpose, they’ll handle you—usually at 3 a.m. when something important stops syncing. Workato recipes will happily stop or silently skip steps when something breaks, and unless you set up smart error handling, you may not even notice until a user complains or data goes missing.
Here’s what you’re up against:
- APIs time out, rate limit, or return weird data.
- Users enter junk input, or leave required fields blank.
- Someone changes credentials or access.
- Downstream systems go offline or change structure.
You can’t prevent all errors, but you can make sure you know about them early and recover gracefully.
Step 1: Know how Workato handles errors by default
Before you start building error handling into everything, understand what Workato does out of the box:
- Step-level errors: If a step fails, the recipe stops unless you’ve told it otherwise (with error handling triggers or branches).
- Job errors: The whole run is marked as failed. You’ll see this in the job history, but only if you go looking.
- Notifications: Unless you set them up, you won’t get an email or Slack ping when something goes wrong.
What this means: If you don’t build error handling in, you’re relying on Workato’s logs. That’s fine for test recipes, but a bad bet for anything business-critical.
Step 2: Decide what matters (and what can fail quietly)
Not every error deserves an alert. If you try to update a contact and they’re already up to date, that might not be worth a Slack message. But if you can’t connect to Salesforce for an hour, that’s a big deal.
Ask yourself:
- What are the “must-not-fail” steps in this recipe?
- What data loss is acceptable? (Usually, “none” — but be honest.)
- Who needs to know if something goes wrong? And how fast?
Pro tip: Don’t build noisy error notifications. If you get 30 emails a day, you’ll start ignoring all of them—including the important ones.
Step 3: Use “Error Monitor” triggers for critical recipes
If a recipe is business-critical, set up a separate “Error Monitor” recipe using Workato’s built-in error triggers. This recipe listens for errors across all (or a subset of) your recipes and sends alerts where you actually see them (like Slack or email).
How to set it up:
- Create a new recipe.
- Choose the “Recipe error” trigger (“When a recipe job fails”).
- Filter for the recipes or folders you care about.
- Add action steps to send notifications—Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, whatever works for your team.
- Make notifications clear, with recipe name and error details.
Why bother? You don’t want to check 20 job logs every morning. Centralizing error alerts keeps things sane.
Step 4: Use step-level error handling blocks—sparingly
Workato lets you handle errors within recipes using “On Error” blocks or by branching with conditional logic. These let you:
- Retry steps (good for flaky APIs)
- Skip to a fallback (like sending a notification)
- Clean up after a failure (like rolling back a partial update)
But don’t overdo it. If you wrap every step in error handling, your recipe gets unreadable fast. Focus on steps where:
- External systems are unreliable (e.g., API calls)
- Data is coming from outside your control (user input, webhooks)
- You’re writing or deleting data (so you don’t trash good records)
Example:
plaintext If “Create record in Salesforce” fails: - Try again up to 2 times (with short delays) - If still failing, send a Slack message and stop the job
What to avoid: Don’t build complex “just keep going” logic unless you know why. Silent failures are worse than noisy ones.
Step 5: Use retries with backoff (but don’t hammer the API)
Lots of errors are just bad timing—a network hiccup, a temporary API outage. Workato lets you retry steps, either automatically (in job settings) or manually (with repeat logic).
Best practices:
- Use short delays between retries (like 10-30 seconds), and don’t retry forever. Three tries is plenty.
- If the failure is always the same (bad data, permissions), retries won’t help. Don’t bother.
- Some APIs will rate limit or block you if you retry too quickly. Be nice.
Skip this for: Manual data entry errors or configuration problems. No amount of retries will fix a missing field.
Step 6: Log errors with enough context to debug
If you’re just sending “Step failed!” alerts, you’ll be stuck digging through logs later. Include:
- The error message or code from the failed step
- The record or data that caused the problem (not just “something failed”)
- Timestamp and recipe name
How to do this: Use variables to pull in relevant fields, and include them in your notification or log entry.
Honest take: Don’t log sensitive data (like passwords or PII) in alerts. You’ll regret it.
Step 7: Graceful recovery—don’t lose data if you can help it
The best error handling isn’t just about alerting you. It’s about making sure you don’t lose important data when something goes sideways.
- Queue up failed records for retry: Instead of dropping bad jobs, save them to a table or file so you can try again later.
- Alert and pause: For high-risk recipes, stop automation after repeated failures and alert someone to investigate.
- Partial rollbacks: If you’ve already made changes (like created records), think about whether you need to undo those steps.
Not worth it: Don’t build complicated retry queues for throwaway notifications or low-value data.
Step 8: Test your error handling—don’t trust your setup
It’s easy to think “I set up error handling, so I’m covered.” Reality check: Most people never test their error flows. Intentionally break your recipes:
- Disconnect a connection
- Enter bad data
- Cause an API to fail (simulate with a dummy endpoint)
Make sure your alerts fire, retries happen as expected, and nothing gets silently dropped.
Pro tip: Review your error logs after a few months. Are you getting too many alerts? Not enough? Tune as you go.
What to skip: Hype, overengineering, and pointless alerts
A few things that sound smart but aren’t, in practice:
- “Self-healing” automations: These are just retries with extra steps. Cool in theory, but often just make failures less visible.
- Excessive branching: If your recipe looks like spaghetti, it’s doing too much. Split into smaller recipes if needed.
- Alerting on every error: You’ll ignore them all. Focus on errors you can act on.
Keep it simple, tune as you go
Error handling in Workato isn’t rocket science, but it does take some thought. Start with basic alerts on real failures, add retries where they make sense, and make sure you’re not drowning in noise. Most importantly, check your setup every now and then—your business (and your sanity) will thank you.
Don’t chase perfect. Build for “good enough,” watch what breaks, and adjust. Reliable automation comes from steady tweaks, not wishful thinking.