Troubleshoot Your Custom Activity
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Eliminate bugs in your custom activities.
- Put your custom activity to work in Journey Builder.
We live in the real world—typos and all. So if your custom activity isn’t behaving as it should, remember these troubleshooting tips to get back on track.
Run Through the Steps
Before anything else, you need to make sure that Journey Builder and the custom activity can communicate with each other. So the first step centers on the hosted app.
Make Sure Everything Is Accessible
The endpoint for the app needs to be both web accessible and SSL enabled. The steps to make this happen can vary depending on where you host your custom activity files, but the final result should ensure all of the files are available and secure.
Validate, Validate, Validate
It’s possible that a random character slipped through, so make sure your JSON is valid. Use your favorite JSON formatter just to be sure. And make sure that your file doesn’t include any byte order markers (BOM), because Journey Builder doesn’t handle them.
The config.json File
Remember that the config.json file includes some required fields, so make sure you’ve included them as well.
- workflowApiVersion string
- metaData object
- type string
- lang string
- arguments object
- configurationArguments object
- userInterfaces object
If any of those are missing from your config.json file, you may have found the issue.
Make the Values Match
Go back and check to make sure the following values match.
- The config.json file’s key property and the installed package component’s key field. (Journey Builder overrides the config.json file when the key is missing or incorrect.)
- The installed package’s endpoint URL and the directory containing the config.json file.
Time Out
Custom activities time out after 60 seconds, and there is no retry logic. Make sure that everything is running correctly and that you’re not experiencing any server issues.
What Next?
Even after your custom activity shows up in your Journey Builder account, take some time to test it in Journey Builder before you start including it in your production workflow. Make sure that your activity behaves as expected in a journey and scales up to large amounts of contacts as they travel through your journey.
Those are exactly the steps Warren takes as he gets ready to share the custom activity with his NTO team members. After making sure everything works, the discount codes start to flow out from NTO and prompt more sales. Nice work!