Navceed

Workflow break check · your result

Where your workflow between your tools typically breaks

These are the places setups like yours usually fail; they are not findings about your systems, since nothing here looked at them. Each one comes with a way to check it yourself. Navceed is being built to run checks of these six kinds; today it runs them on an example company, and connecting your own tools is coming next.

1. What the next tool did never comes back

Check firstAnywhereRun by whoever runs the stepabout 20 min

Shown because you answered “Someone updates it by hand, or from a list”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. Pick five things that happened in the next tool last week and open each one's record in the first tool. Note which are missing and why: different identifier, no matching record, automatic message.

A reply, a payment, a status change or a decision happens in the next tool, and the first tool never learns of it. One team works from an old picture.

Why it happens. The way back was never built, or it only matches records one way, so a second address, a missing record or an automatic message breaks the link.

Usually fixed by: The owner of the returning step, with the first tool's admin.
Kind of break, one of six: Return path: does what the next tool did get back to the first?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

2. A step stops, or runs late, and nobody is told

Check firstAnywhereRun by whoever runs the stepabout 20 min

Shown because you answered “We wouldn't”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. For each step, write how long it normally goes without producing anything, then look at the time since its last output. Anything silent for three times its normal gap deserves a look.

A step that should run every hour or every day stops, or slips by hours, while everything around it looks normal. Work piles up behind it.

Why it happens. A connection lost its login, hit a limit or failed once and was never retried, and an error log nobody reads is the only place it shows.

Usually fixed by: Whoever runs the step.
Kind of break, one of six: Freshness: is the step still running, and on time?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

3. A record never arrives in the next tool

Worth a quick lookAnywhereYou can run thisabout 20 min

Shown because you answered “I'm not sure, to: How would you find out if a record never arrived in the next tool?”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. Take last week's records from the first tool (first-time ones only, leaving out tests) and look each up in the next tool. List the ones missing and look for what they share: a rare value, a blank required field, a peak day.

Something that should move from one tool to the next is refused, skipped or held back, and the person or company it was about never shows up. The first tool says it sent it.

Why it happens. A rule, a required field, a daily limit or a lost login stops it, and nothing tells the people who care.

Usually fixed by: Whoever owns the connection, with the owner of the receiving tool.
Kind of break, one of six: Arrival: did it show up in the next tool in time?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

The common questions follow six kinds of check: Arrival (did it show up in the next tool in time?), Return path (does what the next tool did get back to the first?), Count (do the numbers at each end agree?), Freshness (is the step still running, and on time?), Field landed (did each field arrive with a value, in the right place?), Condition (does a rule that should always hold, hold?).

Checking by hand does not last

Everything above is a one-off look. The breaks that cost you are the ones that start next Tuesday, when someone changes a field.

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