Logging in Power Automate Desktop

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I need to monitor the the executed actions/sub flows in the power automate desktop.
Is there any option available for logging mechanism in the power automate desktop.

Thanks.

[Henrik_M]

Only from the Power Automate portal:

[siyong_liu]

In the old WinAutomation, there is a "Log message" action which allows you to do just that. I don't find this in Power Automate Desktop anymore, so I guess an alternative could be to use "Write text to file" action instead. Hope this helps!

[lisha]

Hi @siyong_liu 

How "Write text to file" action works for getting the log message in power automate desktop?

[Ahammad_Riyaz]

Hi @lisha 

We can't extract that value from cloud to write to file into PAD.

[lisha]

@Ahammad_Riyaz 

No, I am asking for extracting value from PAD only and write to file.

[Ahammad_Riyaz]

@lisha 

In pad u have to go with add item into list avery every imp action,

last u can specify write text to file.

[tkuehara]

Hi @Anonymous 

As already pointed out by others here, there's no in-built logging system: you'll have to build one.

[tkuehara]

Hi @lisha 

I'd recommend you to write to file right after any important step you want to record: the problem with writing everything at end is that if any error breaks your bot, you'll end up with no log at all.

[siyong_liu]

Hi @lisha 

Using "Write text to file" is only a workaround solution for now. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, the Log message action will be made available in desktop flows, enabling users to log custom messages.

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Any sort of additional logging that we could suck out of PAD would be extremely helpful.

I'm finding it excruciatingly frustrating that there isn't even any detail when a simple action fails such as clicking on a UI element, it fails to provide any additional details... like what step of the flow it was on..  or even what the element it was trying to click on...  I usually have to figure out where it left off at based on what's on the computer currently.  Heaven help me when running unattended actually starts working.

[MichaelAnnis]

@Anonymous,

This doesn't answer the original question for full logging; however, if running manually from your own desktop, an error that stops the bot from proceeding should provide you the subflow, step number, and a brief description in a popup at the bottom of PAD (at least it does if you have it open in Edit Mode when you run it). 

Short of that, this should be a possible solution:

1) "On block error" the entire Main tab; note, I haven't tested this, but I believe this would be second to any internal command errors that exist within a given command.

2)  In the "On block error", point all errors to the "OnError" Subflow.

3)  In the "OnError" subflow, write your LastError to a text file:

If running manually, you can Stop Flow with error message; if meant to be ran unattended, I would simply change this to Stop Flow Successfully.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately there seems to a limitation to this solution.  Error messages that occur in a desktop flow triggered by another desktop flow doesn't send the error on up through the chain of flows.  I was hoping there wasn't something special I had to do to get this to happen.  My organization of these flows has been such that I do a lot of "Run Desktop Flows" chained together in another main flow.  I cannot seem to wrap all of those "Run Desktop Flows" into an "Error Block" because the LastError is just some generic "Cannot run flow".

I'm just hoping that the solution isn't to go back into every Main Flow and wrap them in error blocks to solve this... I feel like these flows should be able to show the stack trace or 'flow' trace. =[

[Anonymous]

This doesnt seem to work for desktop flows currently running. 

Do anybody know a way to monitor running robots except from writing to a file?

[charles_ross_oh]

While awaiting the December feature release where we get Logging, I use a Subflow and a couple of flow variables to do progress logging to a text file (Logfile_Actions). You get current time and append your log text to that to make a log line. Painful but in the subflow it's bearable - you set your string variable and call the subflow. 

[charles_ross_oh]

I forgot to mention clearly how to use it: 

In your main flow, you set the variable "wf_logmessage" with a string, such as "we are in the first loop" then call the sub flow - your message will be timestamped and appended to the log. Make sure you set the text file action to "Append" rather than Overwrite mode.

[charles_ross_oh]

Sadly, MS removed this from the Wave 2 features. I just found it in the  "Features removed from release plan" section.  Had been waiting for months. 

Change history 2021 release wave 2 | Microsoft Docs

[kostasc]

As other users mentioned above, you can find all the above, in the Power Automate portal.