Alert on the near-misses, not just total failures

Most people only build alerts for complete crashes. But an automation can technically finish and still hit a smaller exception along the way — a record it could not match, a field it left blank, a step it had to skip.

This matters because these smaller exceptions are early warning signs. They often show up quietly for a while before they grow into a full failure, and by the time the automation actually crashes, the smaller problem has usually been happening unnoticed for some time. Catching the exception the first time it happens gives you a chance to fix the root cause before it turns into a bigger mess a customer notices. I check my busiest automation's exceptions the same way I check its full failures, since the small ones usually show up first.

Build a lighter alert for these cases — a note, not a siren — so you see the pattern without being flooded.

Try this today: check whether your busiest automation reports exceptions separately from full failures, and add that if it does not.