Workflow Troubleshooting: why wasn’t my job created?

Use this guide when you’ve sent an email to a workflow and the job didn’t appear in BigChange, or it appeared with the wrong details. It starts from what you see and takes you to the likely cause.

Step 1: Find out which step stopped

If you have error emails turned on (see Step 6), look for the error email. It tells you:

• the reason for the failure,
• the name of the action that failed, and
• a link to the execution log in the portal.

Click the link to see the run, then go to Step 3.

If you don’t have an error email, find the run yourself:

1. Open the workflow and go to Workflow Overview.
2. Open Run History and find the run for your email, using the time you sent it.
3. Click the run to see each action and where it stopped.

If there’s no run for your email at all, go to Step 2.

What the status means

Step 2: There is no run

If Run History has no run, the email didn’t start the workflow.

• Check the address. Send to the address shown on the workflow’s Incoming Email action.
• Check your mailbox rule. If you forward emails automatically, the rule must match the sender and the subject. A rule that only forwards some emails will miss others.
• Check the attachment. If the workflow reads a PDF and the email has none, or your attachment filter excludes it, the workflow may not run as you expect. [confirm]
• Refresh Run History after a short wait before assuming the email didn’t arrive. [confirm any delay]

If you receive a lot of unwanted failures from system emails such as portal chasers or status updates, tighten your forwarding rule. See The Incoming Email Starting action.

Step 3: Fix the action that failed

Find the failed action in the list below.

Extract Text

Reason: “No match found for [variable] in regex”
The pattern didn’t match the text of the email or PDF. Common causes:

• The text differs from your usual emails, for example an extra full stop or character in a name.
• The sender changed the layout, so the heading the pattern looks for has gone.
• The pattern itself needs fixing. Test it on its own before using it.
• The action is extracting from the wrong source. Check it uses Body, not From Email.

The workflow carries on down the failed branch, so you can add a fallback such as an AI Prompt. See Extract Text.

AI Prompt

The action failed or returned no value.
The AI couldn’t find a value that matched what the prompt asked for.

• Check the value is actually in the email.
• If the value is sometimes missing, add instructions to the prompt for that case, and add a fallback such as a Conditional Value or a second AI Prompt.
• Check that each output’s name matches the field it feeds.

See AI Prompt.

Search Contact in BigChange

The run took the Found Many branch, or stopped at Not Found.

• A job is only created when the search finds exactly one contact, or when the workflow creates a new contact after finding none.
• Found Many: more than one contact matched. Make the search more specific, for example name plus postcode. Avoid searching on postcode alone, which can match an unrelated contact. Add fallback search terms, and connect something to the Found Many branch so you notice it.
• Not Found: connect it to Create a Contact in BigChange, or to a Fail Workflow action, so the run doesn’t end silently.

See Search Contact in BigChange.

Create a Contact in BigChange

• Name too long. BigChange limits contact names to 50 characters. Shorten the name in an earlier step.
• Contact group. Check the group name matches BigChange exactly. It’s case-sensitive.
• Phone number. The variable mapped to Phone must have the Phone data type, not Text.
• Custom fields. Names must match BigChange exactly, including spaces and capitals.

See Create a Contact in BigChange.

Create Job in BigChange

• Job type. The name must match a job type in BigChange exactly. If an AI Prompt chooses it, check every job type it can return exists.
• Contact ID. It must be digits only. Remove spaces or typed-in text next to the variable. If the node can be reached from both a found contact and a created one, put both contact ID variables in the field, next to each other, with nothing between them.
• Job description. BigChange doesn’t allow < or >. Remove HTML from email text before creating the job.
• Service level. If you set it with a Conditional Value, every response time you might receive needs a rule or a default. An order with an unmatched value can fail.
• Missing data. A value the workflow needs, such as a phone number, isn’t in the email. Check the original, and add a fallback if it’s sometimes missing.

See Create Job in BigChange.

Filter Attachments, Upload Files to BigChange

• Nothing came through. If no files match your filters, the list is empty. Check the file type, file name and size settings, and test with a real email.
• Signature images came through. Add a File size → Greater than filter.

See Filter Attachments [add link] and Upload Files to BigChange.

Send Email

• Every field in the Properties panel must be filled in, including the recipient.
• To send to several people, separate the addresses with commas.
• For attachments, choose them in the Attachments field.

See Send Email.

External Action

• Check the credentials are saved in Secret Management, with no extra spaces, for the right environment, and that the key is still active.
• Check header names are spelled and capitalised exactly. Authorization has a Z.
• For errors returned by BigChange, contact support with the reason shown in the log.

See External Action and Secret Management.

Step 4: The run completed but there’s no job, or the job is wrong

A run can show Complete and still not do what you expected.

• A branch ended early. Open the run and follow the path it took. A Not Found or Found Many branch with nothing connected ends the run without a job.
• Filters removed everything. A Filter Attachments action with strict filters outputs an empty list.
• The wrong value was picked up. Check the Extract Text and AI Prompt results in the run. A job created in the wrong place or with wrong details usually means one of these returned something unexpected, or the search matched the wrong contact.

Step 5: Re-run and check

After a fix, send a test email and check the new run in Run History. For changes to a workflow someone else built, contact support rather than editing it yourself.

Step 6: Be told when it happens again

Turn on error emails so you hear about failures straight away.

1. Open the workflow and go to the Workflow Configuration sidesheet.
2. Turn on Enable error emails.
3. Enter one or more addresses, separated by commas.

An email is sent when the last action in a run fails or when a branch reaches a Fail Workflow action. It includes the reason, the name of the action that failed and a link to the execution log. Give your actions clear display names so the email tells you where to look.

See Failed Workflow Notifications.

Contact support

If you can’t find the cause, email support@buildconcierge.com with:

• the workflow name,
• the date and time of the run, or of the email you sent,
• the original email, forwarded with its attachments,
• the link from the error email, if you have one,
• what you expected, and what happened.