When an automation breaks, improve the way it is communicated and how to identify what broke it

When an automation breaks, it sends an email to the automation creator and sometimes indicates it is broken in the automation settings with an exclamation warning symbol. When you open the automation, it will show it is broken, but does not identify what changed in the automation. It would be great if Wrike could:

Send the email to more than just the automation creator; perhaps also the owner of the space
Make it more consistent in displaying the exclamation symbol that the rule is broken - it only works for me ~15% of the time. I only know an automation is broken when I open the rule, and then it seems to add the exclamation warning
Allow us to sort the automation by active/non-active to easily identify broken ones from a long list
Include information when you open the automation of what broke in it. Currently, if only indicates where something broke, but it doesn't say what was changed. An indication of what used to be used for the automation would help identify what needs to be corrected.

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Comments

Rohan V

Hello, @Nick Hofmeyer 👋 Thank you for posting your suggestions in such clear detail. We’re passing this along to our Product Team now 👍

Anna Giacobbe

Broken automations and the lack of clarity on what broke and where has been a real struggle!

Sometimes, we don't even get notified and just happen to fall upon broken automations in the backend of spaces or the account.

Upvoted!

Kelsey Rudolph

Upvoted! Your fourth point has been a struggle for me. Because this had been an issue that occurs frequently enough, I actually created an excel document outlining all of our automations with the columns: Status, Name, Applies to, Space, Location, Rule, Condition, Then do this, and Objective. So that when/if an automation breaks, I can reference how it was set up and what the objective was if I need to go a different angle.

In this document, I also use a color-coding system to identify if an automation relies on people, workflows, custom fields, or locations so that if I need to make a change to say, a custom field, I can vet it out ahead of time to see if it will impact an automation. This process has really saved me in realizing how these items are linked together, especially as we migrate towards a more automated world. Would be helpful if the system itself could support this!

Tiffany Sands

@Kelsey Rudolph Thanks for sharing! This sounds like something I need. Any chance of you sharing a screenshot?

Kelsey Rudolph

@Tiffany Sands here is a small snippet. We currently have around 200 automations, so this definitely helps keeps things organized and to remember why they were created in the first place!

Florian Kislich

Maybe it could be possible to display a warning in advance if something is changed within wrike that would break an automation rule?

Rohan V

@Florian Kislich, thanks for chiming in on the conversation, and for sharing your suggestion! 👍