Overview
There are three approaches to testing actions while building your stories. This article will explore each method and highlight the scenarios where they are most effective.
Tines references
Before getting started, we recommend familiarizing yourself with the surrounding functionality this article covers:
Make it happen
We'll use the following example of a "Get User Info" action's event data that kicks off a story:
{
"user": "Jane Tino",
"email": "jtino@tines.io",
"usernames": [
{
"value": "jtino",
"is_active": true
},
{
"value": "jane_tino",
"is_active": false
}
]
}
⚙️ Option one: Test mode
Ideal when needing to run a quick test, you can use Test mode with either:
Previous event data
New, dummy data created in the Test panel payload
to test without the action producing results in the Events panel. This will also ensure that no subsequent actions are executed.
Take a look at the event data for the "Get User Info" action above. Let's feed this into another action called "Pull User Email" that is referencing a JSON path to get_user_info.body.email in its payload to pull in jtino@tines.io.
Test with previous event data
If we've already run the "Get User Info" action before, we can utilize its output event data to test the "Pull User Email" action:
Click the action tile you want to test.
Click Test on the action menu bar. The Test pop-up window will appear.
Within the Inbound Events tab, select the event data you want to test with.
If you'd like to double-check beforehand, you can click Load in editor to see what's going to be fed into the test run.
Click Test.
See the output of the tested action in the Events tab of the Test window:
Test with new dummy data
If you want to test your action with value data that's different from your events, you can utilize the Editor tab of the Test window. How you format your test payload relies on how your action is currently configured and the upstream path it is referencing.
Click the action tile you want to test.
Click Test on the action menu bar. The Test pop-up window will appear.
Within the Editor tab, create the payload via Builder or Plain code.
Make sure that the payload structure here aligns with the JSON path you are trying to test in your action.
Click Test.
See the output of the tested action in the Events tab of the Test window.
⚙️ Option two: Re-emit
When you need to re-execute a specific run of your Tines Story, you can utilize the "Re-emit option. This is helpful if you want to see how certain event data flows through logic that you might have updated downstream from a previous run. This is a very common method of building and testing actions as you go.
You can find the Re-emit option via:
Select an action tile → three-dot menu → Re-emit last event on the action menu bar. This will re-emit the most recent output event data from the action selected.
Select an action tile → Events on the action menu bar (or, click on the event count in the top-right) → Re-emit. This will re-emit the event that is currently selected.
⚙️ Option three: Change control
In Tines, any updates to a story are applied and made live immediately by default. This approach is ideal for simpler use cases and building the initial version of your workflow.
However, for established, mission-critical workflows, greater control over changes is essential. You need the ability to experiment safely and implement complex updates all at once. This is where change control is most effective.
When change control is enabled, the "Live" execution environment cannot be edited directly. Instead, all changes are made in the "Test" environment and, once finalized and verified, are deployed to Live in a change control request. To learn more about Change Control, visit our product documentation: Change Control
Please Note: Change control is not available on Community Edition tenants, nor is it included in our default licensing. If you are interested in adding change control to your tenant, please reach out to your Tines Customer Success Manager.