Monitoring and troubleshooting IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service

App Connect provides tools and resources for you to monitor and troubleshoot your instances, flows, and runtimes. If you find an issue that you can't fix yourself, you can consult the community of App Connect users or raise a ticket to request support.

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The following information describes some initial steps to validate and monitor flows in App Connect Designer and how to get help.
The following topics provide more information about how to troubleshoot your flows, integration runtimes, and App Connect Enterprise as a Service instance.

Validating that your event-driven flows and API flows are ready to run

When you create, edit, or import event-driven or API flows, App Connect validates each application or Toolbox node in the flow automatically.

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If validation errors are detected, a warning icon Warning icon is shown on any nodes that need attention. (If you’re creating a flow, you might not see a warning icon for a node until you move to another node.) Validation errors are reported typically for unconnected accounts, missing values in mandatory fields, and invalid syntax in JSONata expressions that you type into fields. If you hover the mouse over the warning icon, the label identifies the issue. The following example shows that the account for a node in the flow is not connected. Screenshot that shows a warning icon on a flow node with the label "Not connected"

To be able to start a flow, you must resolve all validation errors. For more information about validating flows, see Validating your flow is ready to run.

Checking the status of running flows in the Designer dashboard

To view the status and related messages for a running event-driven or API flow, look at the tile for the flow on the App Connect Designer dashboard.

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If you're on the VPC hours plan, you can run your flows in App Connect Designer to test that they're working as you expect. In the App Connect Designer dashboard, a tile represents each flow that you create. The tile contains information about the health of your flows.
  • If the flow tile has a green checkmark, the flow ran successfully. Click the check to see when the flow was last triggered. Screenshot of a tile that has a label that says "Running" and a checkmark icon
  • If the flow tile has a red exclamation point, the flow has a problem. Click the exclamation point to discover the problem. Screenshot of a tile that has a label that says "Running" and a warning icon
The following examples describe how to resolve some typical issues.
The connection to an application is broken
  • When you configure App Connect to connect to an application like Gmail, a notification that you authorized App Connect to use your account details is recorded in your account profile for that application. For example, if you provide App Connect with your Google credentials to connect to your Gmail account, you can see this authorization in your Google account (under Sign in & security > Connected apps and sites). If you remove the authorization from your Google account, App Connect can no longer connect to your Gmail account and any flows that use Gmail as a target application stop. To reconnect App Connect to an application where the authorization was removed, reconnect to your account on the Catalog tab of App Connect Designer. You can choose to update the account, or remove the account and add the account again (or add a different account).
The flow received a timeout error
If a flow takes too long to run, it receives a timeout error.
  • For an event-driven flow, a maximum of 5 minutes is configured for a flow to complete.
  • For an API flow, a maximum of 120 seconds is configured for a flow to complete. Also, when you call an API operation to call an API flow, the request is passed to App Connect through an API gateway that has a 70-second timeout period. In exceptional circumstances, it is possible for the API flow to continue running but the API gateway to timeout and return a 504 gateway timeout response.
If you encounter a timeout error, you can try several things to recover.
  • Wait a few minutes, then try again to trigger the event-driven flow or to call the API operation.
  • If an API operation is called many times concurrently, each call starts a new instance of the API flow. You can use rate limiting (on the Manage tab of the API) to reduce the chance that some running API flows are delaying others and causing gateway timeout errors. When rate limiting is enabled, API calls that fall outside of the limit are rejected and response code 429 is returned.
The flow received a concurrent user limit error for Salesforce

If more than 15 flows try to run concurrently by using the same Salesforce account, you see the error You've exceeded your organization's concurrent user limit for your Salesforce account.

If you encounter a concurrent user limit error for Salesforce, you can try several things to recover.
  • Wait a few minutes, then try again to trigger the event-driven flow or to call the API operation.
  • If an API operation is called many times concurrently, each call starts a new instance of the API flow. You can use rate limiting (on the Manage tab of the API) to reduce the chance that some running API flows are delaying others and causing concurrent user limit errors. When rate limiting is enabled, API calls that fall outside of the limit are rejected and response code 429 is returned.

Keeping flow processing within limits

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When you're developing integrations, ensure that your flows are within the following limits.
  • A single flow can run for a maximum of 10 minutes.

    The running time of the flow is measured from when the flow is triggered until the last action completes for that trigger. This limit doesn't include batch processes that run asynchronously to the flow but that are counted as part of the flow. This limit applies to the flow runs and VPC hours plans.

  • The maximum size of the data that can trigger the flow is 100 MB.

    This limit includes the event, request, or the total size of a batch. 100 MB is the overall limit, but the limit might be lower for some connectors or nodes. Individual limits are documented in the how-to guides. This limit applies to the flow runs and VPC hours plans.

  • A maximum of 1000 actions (or nodes) can be completed in one flow run.

    This limit is not for the number of steps in a flow but the number of times an action is completed during one flow run.

Getting help

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If you find an issue in App Connect that you can't fix yourself, you can get help from the community or by raising a ticket for support.

Procedure

  1. First, check the IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service status page of the IBM SaaS console to see whether your issue listed.
    You can access the IBM SaaS console by clicking your initials on the App Connect header.
  2. Check whether your issue is listed in Known limitations.
  3. Check the App Connect discussion forum on IBM Community to see whether an answer is already provided there.
    The IBM App Connect team and other App Connect users monitor the discussion forum.
  4. If you have a paid subscription and your issue isn't covered by known issues on the status page, raise a ticket on https://www.ibm.com/mysupport.