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Workflow Failure Philosophy

Our Approach to Workflow Failures

At Theiagen, we believe our workflows should only fail because of technical issues, not because of poor quality data. Our goal is to create workflows that can handle data in any condition and still provide meaningful results, especially if that data isn’t perfect.

What You Can Expect

  • Your workflow will keep running, even with imperfect data

    Data quality shouldn't cause failures. Poor or incomplete data should never stop your workflow. Instead, the workflow will process it and (hopefully!) provide meaningful outputs, which can include blank results or messages indicating the value could not be generated.

  • Your workflow will provide useful feedback, not errors

    If an issue arises in your data, such as missing or invalid data in a template control, you can know that any workflow failures are due to underlying programmatic issues, not your data.

  • You’ll gain a better understanding of your data

    Since poor-quality data will not cause workflow failures, the relevant QC results will be available as output, so you can understand what's happened and make any needed adjustments moving forward.

Ongoing Improvements

While we’ve made a lot of progress, we’re still working on fully implementing this philosophy across all of our workflows. If you encounter an issue where poor data quality leads to a failure, please let us know. Your feedback helps us make continuous improvements.

Thanks for being part of the process! We’re always working to improve and your feedback plays a huge role in making that happen. Together, we’ll keep making things run smoother and easier for everyone.

If you experience a workflow failure related to data quality, we want to hear from you! Please reach out to us at support@theiagen.com with the following details:

  • The type of data involved
  • The error messages or failures encountered
  • The steps that led to the issue
    • if this error was generated on the command-line, please include the full command used
    • if this error was generated when running the workflow with Terra.bio, please provide a link to the specific workflow's job history page