Why is this Workflow getting stuck?
Hey, I’m a relatively new NetSuite Administrator and have been more or less learning as I go. I’ve been trying to build a fairly basic email campaign workflow (New record -> send email -> wait a few days -> send another email -> wait a few days -> send another email etc) and am getting hung up. I’ve been banging my head against the wall for too long on this so I figured I would reach out for some help. Included below is a picture of the start of my workflow that I basically want to repeat.
Note that right now I’m focused on making the first few states work. This is an entry based WF, it triggers when someone fills out a landing page on our website. This creates a record in NetSuite for them, and triggers this workflow. The trigger is working properly (I have the first state send me an email when a record enters). Where I’m running into an issue is with the delay. If I take the delay out completely on the transitions, the record moves straight through the workflow as intended. However, if I put a delay on the transition from the “Delay: 3 Days” state to the “Lead Nurturing Email #2” state, the record gets stuck in the “Delay: 3 Days” state even after the delay has passed. I’m not sure why.
It’s worth noting that all the transitions are on entry as well, as when I was doing scheduled it wouldn’t work even without a delay. If there’s any info I haven’t provided that would be useful, please let me know. If anyone could help point me in the right direction here that would be greatly appreciated.
For anyone still reading this, changing it to “Transition On” scheduled didn’t solve the problem. For reference, the transition that is giving me a hard time is below:
I would think you are probably trying to do too much in a single workflow.
You might be better off doing this with separate scheduled workflows with more complex saved search requirements and setting field values so that they get picked up by the next scheduled workflow.
Maybe something along the lines of a “next send date” field.
The amount of work this would entail is significant but it’d definitely get you past your issue.
I’m not sure I understand, could you elaborate?
Do you mean that I should break it up into smaller sections and have the first section trigger the second section, which would be in a different workflow?
The reason I’m most confused is because as I said above, when I remove the delay everything runs smoothly (albeit all at once – not what I want). It’s only when I throw in a delay that things get stuck. I could look into doing it via saved search, although if it’s based on “Entry”, would that mean that the workflow would trigger when a record comes in that meets that criteria? And even then, I still need a delay which I’m still convinced is where this is getting hung up.
Thanks for your reply either way, this has been driving me crazy this week and I appreciate the help.
Editing to say that we have other workflows that are more complicated than this one (that were built by people who no longer work at my company) and they run just fine. I’m not convinced that this WF is too complex.
One thing to look at is the workflow history on the record itself (I believe under system information). You will also see active workflows, which is where I believe you will find this workflow and the state that it is stuck in. Once you see that, you may have more clarity on where your logic isn’t passing from state to state to get to an end state.
Yeah, so I’ve been checking that and it always gets stuck on the last state it was in before the delay transition. That’s why I’m pretty much convinced it’s an issue with the transition, or even somehow the delay itself.
Are you testing this in Production or Sandbox? Scheduled workflows and workflow actions won’t run in sandboxes (SuiteAnswers 19470).
If you’re in production and this still isn’t working, my suggestion is the same as @jarens mentioned, if you can share the detailed workflow logs from a record that is stuck we might be able to help you figure out why NS is ignoring it (you’ll need to make sure that Logging is turned on in the settings for your workflow).
Sure, so what exactly do you need to see? As I replied to @jarens above, the workflow keeps getting stuck in the state it was in before my delay transition. I’ll leave a picture below for reference. This is all in production, not in sandbox. Thanks for your reply.
Once you click into “log” for the state where it’s stuck and it opens the log popup, there should be a checkbox at the top for Show Rejected Actions/Transitions. It will only be useful for a record that has already gone past the 3 days, NetSuite should show that it considered the transition and then rejected or skipped it for some reason. Do you see any additional information when checking there?
I should have clarified – while the state is called “Delay: 3 Days”, the delay is actually only set to one hour for testing purposes. Even after that hour, and even after checking the “Show Rejected Actions/Transitions” box, nothing shows. The view looks the same as the one I posted above. When I go to the “Active Workflow” section of system information, it shows the following:
Which to me confirms that it’s just stuck in that state still (the delay is a scheduled delay in the transition after that state).
