We know it happens: From time to time, a recursive workflow may go haywire, or some other issue in your app might cause workload to spike — a lot. Today we’re rolling out real-time notifications for spiking workload unit consumption so that you can build with more confidence that if something on your app needs immediate attention, we’ll let you know.
@laura.oppenheimer
It would be cool if we could customise WU thresholds for notifications in our apps. Even x2 of WU consumption can be critical for some apps and there is no need to wait until more WUs (until it will become x5 from previous weeks average) will be burned before a notification is triggered.
Totally! We started out with one threshold as our default because candidly we don’t have a framework for notifications on apps right now (nowhere to manage notifications and alerts, etc). We wanted to get something out sooner rather than later and didn’t want a perfect solution to get in the way of getting something useful shipped. But I hear you! I’d love to hear how this threshold works for you (or not) in the future so we can prioritize improvements.
Will we receive notifications for planned spikes? e.g. a monthly loop over data (or any other large data modification).
On another note:
Is there plans to allow for catching /limiting excess dev WU (e.g. going over the 100k credits)
What are the common scenarios for users running into excess WU from workflows? is it unrestricted loops? are there any plans to provide warnings for Devs in the bubble editor?
What would be the period considered for the rate consideration for last 5 week average comparison? I.e. Will the WU consumption over last 5 minutes be checked or last hour be checked or last day be checked etc?
Will it consider time of the day and day of the week for comparison? i.e. If you are checking “last one hour average”, then if it is tuesday 10pm will you compare it with last 5 tuesdays 10pm?
You said that it will send an in-editor alert if we are in editor. Will it consider as in-editor if we have editor opened, but it is not the tab in-focus or the computer is closed?
You will receive notifications for any spikes that meet the criteria of 5x the previous week’s average. So if you have a scheduled workload that runs every Sunday that you know will hit this threshold, you can ignore the notification.
I’ll let the community chime in here! But mostly we see it when someone has constructed a recursive workflow incorrectly so it never ends.
When your app is using workload, every 5 or so minutes we calculate the last 24 hours up to the current minute. We also calculate the average for each 24 hour chunk at the current minute from 8 days ago to yesterday. We then determine a spike if the last 24 hour WU usage is five times the daily average from the previous week.
By using the previous week’s average from 8 days ago to yesterday, we are better able to take into account weekly jobs that spike an app’s WU.
The in-editor alert will be shown when the editor is open in your browser but to see it, you must look at the tab; we won’t ping you.
So you are saying it would be for a 24 hours period. So, for me to receive spike alert, the consumption of last 24 hours has to be 5x of previous week’s same day’s 24 hour period value relative to that particular moment.
It would be of some help I suppose, but it would probably be bit late in highlighting this, with this method, especially if app’s WU usage is high in general.
But I understand it would be difficult and tricky to come up with a generic spike mechanism for all the apps.
So, it is NOT possible that my app was actually used too much. As it is designed, I get one or two customers using it per day, as many as 5 times in a full day on 2 or 3 occasions per month. So, why the email? Total interaction from my customer using the app is less than 5 minutes per contact.
Not sure of your context but why would getting a notification be bad?
In general, WU usage doesn’t depend on how much time your users interact with your app. If your workflows are badly done a single button click can eat up half your WU budget.
I’m guessing Tom might mean the capacity spike email, not WU consumption. I get that email from time to time for an app that hasn’t been used in years… I just ignore the emails (although, my old app isn’t on a paid plan).
