Troubleshoot issues

This page shows you how to resolve issues that you might encounter when using Workflows.

For more information, refer to monitoring and debugging Workflows.

Deployment errors

When a workflow is deployed, Workflows checks that the source code is free from errors and matches the language syntax. Workflows returns an error if one is found. The most common types of deployment errors are:

  • Referencing an undefined variable, step, or subworkflow
  • Incorrect syntax
    • Incorrect indentation
    • Missing or extraneous {, }, ", -, or :

For example, the following source code throws a deployment error because the return statement references an undefined variable, varC:

- step1:
    assign:
    - varA: "Hello"
    - varB: "World"
- step2:
    return: ${varC + varB}

This incorrect source code is used in the following Google Cloud console and gcloud CLI examples.

Console

When a deployment error occurs, Workflows displays the error message in a banner on the Edit workflow page: Deployment error The error message flags the problem in the source code, specifying the origin of the error when possible:

Could not deploy workflow: failed to build: error in step step2: error
evaluating return value: symbol 'varC' is neither a variable nor a
sub-workflow name (Code: 3)

gcloud

When you run the gcloud workflows deploy command, Workflows returns an error message to the command line if the deployment fails. The error message flags the problem in the source code, specifying the origin of the error when possible:

ERROR: (gcloud.workflows.deploy) [INVALID_ARGUMENT] failed to build:
error in step step2: error evaluating return value: symbol 'varC' is neither
a variable nor a sub-workflow name

To resolve the issue, edit the workflow's source code. In this case, refer to varA instead of varC.

HTTP 403 service account permission errors

Your workflow execution fails when an HTTP server responds with an error code of 403. For example:

Permission 'iam.serviceaccounts.actAs' denied on service
account PROJECT_NUMBER-developer.gserviceaccount.comcompute@ (or it may not exist