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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Email Marketing
Workflows showing failed actions (deleted property reference, missing list, send-from-address removed). Audit HS02 fires here.

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At a glance

Workflows currently showing failed actions in the trailing 7 days. Most-common causes: a property the workflow references was deleted, a list-trigger no longer exists, a send-from address was removed, or a delay step references a property that returned null. Pulled from /automation/v3/workflows plus the per-workflow execution-history endpoint.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your HubSpot data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A B2B SaaS portal running 38 active workflows. Reading on 14 Apr 26: Five things this picture reveals:
  1. Trial Expiry Nurture is the biggest fire (142 errors). The workflow references trial_end_date, a custom property, and someone deleted that property in a Properties cleanup last week. Every enrolment now fails at the delay step. Audit HS02 surfaces the workflow id and the missing-property name as a single fix.
  2. Customer Onboarding has 38 INVALID_EMAIL_ADDRESS errors. This is structurally different from a property-rename: each error is a real customer with a typo’d or fake email at signup. The workflow is fine; the data is not. Fix is a form-validation upstream, not a workflow edit. Pair with Form Submission Volume.
  3. Pricing-Page Re-engagement (12 errors, MISSING_LIST). A list named in the workflow’s enrolment trigger was deleted (probably renamed by accident, then HubSpot lost the reference). Re-link the list and the workflow recovers within the next enrolment cycle.
  4. Quarterly Care Newsletter (4 errors, SEND_FROM_NOT_VERIFIED). The from-address was a former employee’s email; their account was off-boarded last week. Replace with a marketing alias (e.g. care at the brand domain) and re-verify in Domain settings.
  5. Workflow Error Spike alert correlates with this card. When the Trial Expiry Nurture workflow’s 142-error day caused a 7-day baseline spike of 2σ+, the Workflow Error Spike real-time alert surfaced it within an hour. This card is the rolling weekly view; the spike alert is the immediate signal.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Workflow errors are the leading indicator for downstream pipeline drops:

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in HubSpot: Two native views give the closest comparison:
HubSpot → Automation → Workflows (each workflow row shows error indicator) HubSpot → Automation → Workflows → individual workflow → History tab (per-workflow error log)
The workflow-list view’s red-dot indicator should match the workflows in this card. Why our number may legitimately differ from HubSpot’s: Cross-connector reconciliation: Workflow errors usually cause downstream effects in commerce-attached portals:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

A workflow shows an error here but in HubSpot it looks fine, why? Three usual causes: (a) the error has resolved (someone fixed the property) and HubSpot’s UI updated immediately; we trail by one sync cycle. (b) The error is in a recently-disabled workflow; this card filters to enabled. (c) Permission filtering, you do not have visibility into the errored workflow but Vortex IQ does. Why is the same workflow listed every day? Persistent failures (a deleted property, a missing list, an unverified send-from address) re-fire on every enrolment. Until the underlying cause is fixed, the workflow stays on this card. Acknowledging the alert in Nerve Centre does not silence the underlying error. INVALID_EMAIL_ADDRESS, do I need to fix the workflow? No, the workflow is fine. The contact has a typo’d or fake email. The fix is upstream form validation. To suppress the error, add a “filter out invalid emails” step at the workflow start, or fix the form’s email-validation pattern. WORKFLOW_VERSION_MISMATCH, what is that? HubSpot allows draft edits while a workflow runs. If a contact enters a workflow version, the workflow is updated, and a delay step then completes 3 days later, HubSpot raises VERSION_MISMATCH because the contact’s enrolment record points to a version that no longer exists. The fix is to ensure draft edits do not delete or rename steps that running enrolments reference. Multi-portal aggregation, can I see workflow errors across portals? No. One card per portal because workflow ids are portal-scoped, not transferrable. List-segment lag, does it cause workflow errors? Yes. If a list-trigger workflow has a 15-minute enrolment cycle and the list-membership refresh has not yet completed, contacts may enter the workflow before the trigger evaluation completes. This is rare and usually resolves on the next cycle. Lifecycle-stage backfill, can it trigger workflow errors? Yes. If a backfill moves contacts to MQL faster than a downstream MQL-handoff workflow can process, RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED errors fire. The fix is to throttle the backfill or add a delay step in the downstream workflow. Today-volatility, why does the count swing during the day? Errors fire when workflows attempt to enrol or progress contacts. Most workflows run on cron-like schedules (every 15 minutes). The count grows during business hours as enrolments happen and shrinks slightly when persistent errors are fixed. Why is my workflow error count different from my Marketing Hub dashboard? HubSpot’s dashboard may show all-time errors or per-workflow drilldown; this card is portal-wide 7-day rolling. For 30-day or all-time, use HubSpot’s per-workflow History tab.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Workflows With Errors is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across HubSpot and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.