Best practices – collaborate and troubleshoot errors

You can apply tags and assign errors to make troubleshooting more collaborative and efficient. These features allow you to easily identify and prioritize critical errors, speeding up resolution by directing issues to the right team members. Consider the following best practices to optimize your error handling.

Contents

• Plan a process or workflow
• Use tags to track errors
• Assign and collaboratively troubleshoot errors
  • Provide ownership
  • Include a ticketing system
  • Assign sequentially
  • Filter & monitor
• Encourage documentation

Plan a process or workflow

Decide and plan a process to resolve errors – then tag and assign errors to enable the process. If you have a large team, provide a common understanding of what the tags mean and who the assignees could be – a simple flow chart or table that shows important details would suffice. If you are part of a smaller team or the lone member, use helpful tags and self-assign, as required, to resolve errors efficiently.

Use tags to track errors

Use tags to track and troubleshoot ongoing and new errors effectively.

Create and apply meaningful tags: Based on your process, create a set of tags. For example, you could create meaningful and consistent labels:

Update tags: Make timely updates, as required, to tags – if you’ve been assigned an error and, say, you’re using status tags, ensure that the tags are up to date and reflect the current status. For example, when you start working on an assigned error, make sure you change the status tag  from “Open” to “Investigating” or “In Progress.” Since notifications aren't sent for a change in tags, unlike for assignments, you could occasionally check whether any tags have changed by filtering and viewing errors assigned to you.

Assign and collaboratively troubleshoot errors

Decide on assigning errors to those you think could help and quickly get to the root of an issue.

Provide ownership

An error can have only one assignee. You can assign errors to either:

The right person: Encourage a process where a user who built a specific flow or integration takes ownership or leads in troubleshooting related errors. The owner can then assign errors to team members or encourage them to take the initiative and self-assign errors based on their expertise. 

The right team: Assign errors to a group email alias to notify a team about critical errors. This ensures that all relevant members are informed to take action on the error. For example,  business users can assign errors to a group email alias of a team that includes technical experts and is responsible for fixing high-priority errors. After this, the team can then assign it and give ownership to any team member. For example, if the technical team has rotating responsibilities to troubleshoot errors, then using a group email alias will ensure all are informed but that the right person can self-assign or someone in the group can assign it. Also, they can unassign an error from a member working on a P1-tagged error who suddenly has to be out of the office, and quickly reassign it to another for review and troubleshooting to avoid delays.

Include a ticketing system

You could align your process to include working with a ticketing system like Jira or Zendesk. For example, encourage team members to create tickets for assigned errors; then, add a tag for Jira ticket numbers to the error. A ticketing system is helpful if you have a big team and several people involved in the error resolution or back-and-forth discussions. This process will help you quickly identify assignees and timelines.

Assign sequentially

Assign errors sequentially until they are fixed. When dealing with data errors, like upstream or downstream app errors, assign the errors to a team or person responsible for checking standard error issues first. For example, assign an endpoint error to a person or team that checks basic endpoint errors first. Then, retry the error. If the error fails on retry, assign it to the next person or team that might be able to solve the issue.

Filter & monitor

Use filters to monitor errors, especially blockers or critical ones. You can get a quick picture of troubleshooting by filtering on tags, assignees, or the like. For example, if you're a team lead monitoring errors and notice that the progress on an error is slow or you might benefit from a fresh perspective on an error, reassign it. Or, if a situation threatens a delay in the “go live” date of an integration, re-prioritize it. You can be flexible and dynamically manage errors to ensure efficiency.

Encourage documentation

Every integration has a Readme page in which you can document important information. As assignees fix errors or find workarounds or known limitations, they or any specific team member can record them on the Readme page. With time, this collaborative approach will make troubleshooting more effective by harnessing collective knowledge. Note that assignees require Manage permissions to edit the Readme page.