Process Orchestrator

Tracing

Follow an instance in the process viewer and use trace records to see what each stage did and why.

Two tools show what an instance did. The process viewer on the process instance form draws the process with the instance’s progress on top. Trace records, when tracing is on, capture the values the process saw at each step, so you can see why a condition was true or why a flow was skipped.

The process viewer

The viewer uses the same cards, layout, Start pill, End nodes and connectors as the designer, so a process looks the same in both.

Each card’s tile shows the stage’s run status as an icon, a color and a label.
Connectors the instance has taken are drawn darker. Conditions are shown as read-only labels.
The dashed Overdue connector to an escalation stage turns solid once the escalation has happened.
A merge gateway that is still waiting shows “Waiting for other branches”.
An End turns green when the instance completes.
A stage visited more than once shows a list of its visits; select one to see it. Use the view action to open the stage record in a dialog.

Because an instance can have several active stages, the viewer does not assume a single “current stage”.

Legend

Status	Meaning
In Progress	The stage is active.
Completed	The stage completed.
Escalated	The stage passed its due date and the process moved to its escalation stage.
Faulted	The stage failed. Open the stage record to see the error.
Canceled	The stage was canceled, for example because the instance was canceled.
Not Visited	The instance has not reached the stage.

If parts of the process definition cannot be read, the viewer shows what it can with the notice “Parts of this process couldn’t be read, so it is shown without them.” Open the process in the designer to see and fix the problems.

Turn on tracing

Open the business process record.
Select Enable Tracing and save.

From then on, each instance writes Process Stage Trace records under its stage records. Tracing adds records to every instance, so turn it on in development and test, and in production while you investigate a problem.

Trace records

Column	What it holds
Name	The trace’s name.
Process Stage	The stage record the trace belongs to.
Substage	Entering, Task Completion, Exiting or Transition.
Trace Data	The values at that moment, shown in the Business Process Trace Viewer.

Substage	Written when	Useful for
Entering	After the stage has started: its On Entering flows have run and its tasks have been created.	Checking the flow outputs, title, owner and due dates.
Task Completion	Each time a task changes and the completion criteria are still false.	Seeing why the stage has not completed yet.
Exiting	When the stage’s completion has been handled.	Checking the completion result and On Exiting outputs.
Transition	When the process leaves the stage.	Seeing the Target Stage that was taken.

Trace data includes the process and stage values, the result of the completion criteria, the value of each stage flow’s Run only when condition, the flow outputs and, for transitions, the Target Stage. It does not list the result of each transition condition: to see why a path was taken, check the values the conditions use.

To confirm that a stage was left, check the stage record’s status and Transitioned On rather than relying on an Exiting trace alone. Routing through gateways and ends is recorded as stage records (with Stage Type Gateway or End and Came From), not as trace substages.

Values available in expressions

The values you see in trace data are the same ones you use in stage, transition and gateway expressions, for example:

Value	What it is
`Process.Instance.Subject`	The instance subject.
`Process.Instance.DueDate`	The instance due date.
`Process.Instance.Owner`	The instance owner.
`Process.Stage.Instance.Owner`	The stage owner.
`Process.Stage.Instance.DueDate`	The stage due date.
`Process.Stage.Instance.Task`	The stage’s task, for single-task assignments.
`Process.Stage.Instance.Tasks`	The stage’s tasks, for multi-task assignments.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Where to look
An instance is Faulted	The instance Error Message, then the Error column of the faulted stage record. See Validation messages.
A stage does not complete	The Task Completion traces: check the task values the completion criteria read.
A stage flow did not run	The Entering or Exiting trace: check the value of its Run only when condition.
The wrong path was taken	The Transition trace for the target, and the trace values the transition conditions use. Remember that the first true transition in Evaluation order wins.
A merge never continues	The viewer: a waiting gateway shows “Waiting for other branches”. Check which branches are still active.