Scope Intermittently Takes Hours to Run

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by BB-18031745-0

125

Hello,

I've been using this flow for several months with no problems.
Lately, for seemingly no reason, the flow which normally takes approximately 2 minutes to run will go on for hours.
When I check the run, it seems like a random scope will take hours to run when the runtime of the actions in the scope take nearly no time at all (see screenshot)

In this case it took 2 hours to run, in some situations it has taken 12 hours or more.
Has anyone else run into this before? Any likely reasons for this to occur?
This happens fairly rarely, but when it does it throws a wrench into things.

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (5)

Answers (0)

Sort by

David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
You'll need to provide more information.

For example, what is the flow doing?

How is it triggered?

Is the same amount of data processed when it runs in minutes as when it takes hours?

If no, why do some runs process more data than other?

Are you using list rows/list items with a filter query, so it returns different amounts of items.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
BB-18031745-0 125 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
Hi David, here are the answers to your questions.

This flow grabs items from a list, checks the status of the items, and sends out emails where needed

It's a recurrence trigger every 45 minutes

Yes, in the example, the same amount of lists were checked and no emails were sent out. For the specific scope you see in the screenshot an array is filtered yielding an empty array, its combined with another array which was also empty in this instance, that array is fed into a select action which results in another empty array, the elements of that array are joined as a string and appended to a string variable, the array was empty, so this just does nothing in this situation

Yes, as described above.

This run was as simple as it could get and each action sums up to 0 seconds within that scope as you see in the screenshot, yet somehow the scope took 2 hours to run.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Without seeing what the workflow is actually doing and accessing, it is hard to say what the problem is. If all the actions take zero seconds, it is very strange that the scope takes two hours. I would move the actions outside of the scope and see what happens then.

Otherwise, you'll need to share what the flow is getting and what each of the actions is doing. Is there anything else in the scope that you are not showing?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
BB-18031745-0 125 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Thanks for following up @David_MA , it continues to baffle me.
I've shown everything that happens within the scope in the screenshot, here is another example which happened in a different scope for some reason.

Above is a scope with 4 compose actions which just inserts some variables into html for an email template.
99 percent of the time, the entirety of this flow takes <30 seconds to run, but about once a week something goes awry and it blows up.
I have carefully inspected these instances where things went wrong and they are just normal runs besides the long scope times.
This would be much less of an issue if the flow just timed out, but it seems like it will just wait indefinitely and once it gets through the scope everything works as it should.
Taking every action out of a scope would not be ideal as it really helps with understanding the flow / keeping everything organized.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

David_MA 14,956 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like
a
(0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Good luck. The issue is odd. maybe try deleting the scope and recreate it with the actions. Maybe something got corrupted. Every time I've used a scope, the scope run time equals the total of the actions in the scope:

Hopefully someone will have encountered this and has a better suggestion. Deleting and creating a set of actions over again is never fun.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No