How to publish, switch on and read a run

Two separate controls decide whether a workflow does anything, and confusing them is the most common reason one appears not to work. Publishing makes a version live. The toggle decides whether the live version runs.

What does publishing do?

Publish saves what is on screen, checks it, and freezes that version as the live one.

A published version cannot be edited. Editing a published workflow moves it back to draft while the live version keeps running unchanged, which is what lets you work on a change safely.

Publish again to make your draft the live version.

Publishing needs its own permission, separate from being able to build. An archived workflow cannot be published.

Does publishing switch it on?

No, and this is the one to remember. Publishing and the on/off toggle are independent.

A workflow's status pill can read published while the workflow is switched off, and it will not run.

For a workflow to do anything it has to be published and switched on, with the toggle on the workflows list.

Why did publishing refuse?

Because something is incomplete, and you get a message listing every problem. It stays on screen rather than fading, so you can read all of it.

Each flagged step also carries its own red message on the canvas. The usual causes:

• No trigger, or more than one.
• A condition with no rules, or a comparison or value left blank. See How to add a yes/no decision.
• A Create task with no title or department, or a Notify with no message or recipient.
• A Create record missing a required field.
• A field that links to another record, which cannot be compared or set.
• A connection out of a condition that is not on Yes or No.
• Nothing connected to the trigger, or a step stranded off the flow.

Fix the flagged steps and publish again.

A workflow built in an older editor asks you to open it, rebuild the steps and save before publishing.

How do you read a run?

The Runs tab lists every time the workflow fired, newest first, with a status pill, how long ago and how long it took.

Expand one and it reads as a story: what set it off and on which record, then a card per step down a timeline, each saying what it was set up to do and what it actually did.

That second part is what makes debugging quick. "Matched, carried on down the Yes path", "Created the task Restock the sage quarter-zip", "Set Status to Ready for pickup", "Told 3 people, 2 devices buzzed".

A created task has an Open the task link straight to the real thing.

Steps the run never reached show a hollow dot saying so, which is how you see where a branch stopped.

What do the run states mean?

Completed, partially completed in amber, failed, running, queued, waiting and cancelled.

Partially completed means one branch worked and another did not, which is normal on a workflow with two paths.

Cancelled means the loop guard refused the run, and it says why. That is the safety limit on a workflow firing repeatedly for the same record, covered in How to create tasks, records and links from a workflow.

A run whose triggering record was deleted before it ran fails and says so.

Why has it not run at all?

Work down these.

1. Is it published, and separately, is it switched on?
2. Has enough time passed? Changes are picked up on a cycle of a few minutes, and Shopify changes take another poll.
3. Did the record change in a way the trigger watches? A changed trigger with watched fields ticked ignores everything else. See How to choose a trigger.
4. Is the Workflow engine automation switched on, and the Automations module on? Switching that engine off stops every workflow at once.

The empty state on the Runs tab tells you the same thing: publish it, turn it on, then change a record it watches.

Why an automation or workflow did not run covers this alongside the automation cases.

How do you retire one?

Archive it, after a confirmation. Archiving is how a workflow is retired, and an archived one leaves the list.

Switch it off first and watch for a week if you are unsure, because switching off is reversible in a way archiving is not.