Notumation
Advanced

Testing & Dry Run

Test your flows safely before going live.

Manual Run

Every flow has a Run Now button in the flow editor toolbar. Clicking it executes the flow immediately, regardless of whether a trigger event has occurred. This is useful for:

  • Testing a new flow before activating it
  • Running one-off tasks like bulk updates or data cleanup
  • Re-running a flow after fixing an error

Manual runs use real data and make real changes. If your flow updates pages, those updates will happen. Use Dry Run (below) if you want a safe preview.

Dry Run

Click the Test button (next to Run Now) to perform a dry run. A dry run simulates the entire flow execution:

  • Reads real data — queries and property lookups run against your actual Notion workspace
  • Records what would happen — each action step logs what it would do (e.g., “Would update Status to Done on page X”)
  • Makes no changes — no pages are created, updated, archived, or commented on

Dry runs are the safest way to verify your flow logic before going live. Always run a dry test after building or editing a flow.

Reading Results

After a manual run or dry run, an inline execution log appears below the flow editor. Each step shows:

  • A green checkmark for success or a red cross for failure
  • The step number and action type (e.g., “Step 2: Update Page”)
  • Execution duration in milliseconds
  • The output or error message

Click any step in the log to expand its details and see the full input, output, and resolved template variables.

Execution Logs

The Logs tab in the dashboard shows a history of every flow execution. Each entry displays:

  • Flow name
  • Trigger type (e.g., “Row Added”, “Webhook”, “Manual”)
  • Timestamp
  • Duration
  • Status (success, partial failure, or error)

Click any log entry to expand the per-step trace. The trace format shows each step with its result:

[checkmark] Step 1: Query Database (12ms)
[checkmark] Step 2: For Each — 5 iterations (340ms)
  [checkmark] Step 2.1: Update Page (45ms)
  [checkmark] Step 2.2: Add Comment (38ms)
[cross] Step 3: Call API — timeout after 30000ms

Debugging Tips

When a flow does not behave as expected, follow these steps:

  1. Check step order — steps execute top to bottom. Make sure data-producing steps (queries, lookups) run before steps that consume their output.

  2. Verify template variables — expand a failed step in the execution log to see how variables resolved. If a variable shows as raw text (e.g., {{trigger.Name}} instead of “My Task”), the variable name is misspelled or the source step did not run.

  3. Check conditions — if a step was skipped, its condition evaluated to false. Expand the step to see the condition values.

  4. Look at error messages — Notumation surfaces Notion API errors directly. Common ones include “property not found” (name mismatch), “rate limited” (too many requests), and “page not found” (wrong page ID).

  5. Test with dry run first — if you are unsure about a change, always dry-run it before activating.