Error Handling and Exception Queues in Automations
Design automations that retry sensibly, park problems in a queue and never fail silently
A taste of a lesson
When our order flow fails, I just rerun it from the start. Sometimes customers get two confirmation emails. How do I avoid that?
Rerunning from the start repeats every step, including emails already sent. Two changes. First, record each completed step against the order ID, for example a 'confirmation_sent' timestamp, and check it before sending, so the email step skips if it already ran. Second, replay from the step that failed rather than from the beginning, if your tool allows it. Together these make the flow safe to repeat. Which other steps in your flow create something visible to customers or finance?
Written by the teacher as an example. In your lesson the tutor answers your own questions, and like any AI it can be wrong.
What you will be able to do
- Classify errors into transient, data, business rule and AI output problems
- Add retries with limits and make steps safe to repeat
- Design an exception queue with full context and clear resolution options
- Write runbooks and replay failed items without duplicate side effects
Lesson plan
- 1 Kinds of failure Sort errors into types that each need a different response. Start
- 2 Retries done right Retry transient failures safely without loops or floods. Start
- 3 Safe to repeat Make steps idempotent so repeats do not duplicate side effects. Start
- 4 The exception queue Build a queue where failed items wait with everything a person needs. Start
- 5 Approvals and alerts Pause risky steps for approval and alert people without flooding them. Start
- 6 Runbooks and replays Let anyone on the team resolve common failures. Start
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About this tutor
For people who build or own business automations and have been burned by a flow that quietly stopped working. You will learn to classify errors, add retries with limits, make steps safe to repeat, design an exception queue where failed or doubtful items wait for a person with all the context, set up approvals for risky steps, and write runbooks so anyone on the team can clear the queue. The lessons work in any workflow builder or code, with examples from orders, invoices and customer records.
Reviews
4.5
2 ratingsSample
- Henrik T.Sample
Idempotency explained without jargon. The duplicate emails stopped. I would have liked a sample runbook to copy, but I wrote my own.
- Yolanda F.Sample
Our exception queue now has real context, and clearing it takes ten minutes instead of an hour of detective work.
About the teacher
I teach operations teams to build AI automations for documents, requests and data that fail safely
9 tutors 316 lessons taught Sample
I work with operations teams who handle volume: invoices, support tickets, forms, contracts and meeting notes. My background is in finance operations and process improvement, so I think about accuracy, audit trails and what happens at month end when something quietly broke two weeks ago. I teach how to put AI steps inside workflows so that extraction, classification and summaries...
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