Weave in the Workflow Editor

Description

Weave works beside you in the workflow editor and the step forms. It suggests, counts and checks, but it never saves anything: a suggestion is yours only once you keep it and save the step, and a check never stops you saving.

Suggestions in a Step Form

Once you’ve started filling in a step form, click into an empty field. Where Weave has a suggestion, it appears faintly under the field, with a line saying where it came from and a Use button.

Press Tab or click Use to keep it.
Press Escape, or keep typing, to dismiss it.

Weave suggests:

the key columns of a join, such as cost_center = cost_center;
the column mapping of a new step;
the WHERE filter;
an empty expression cell, and an empty expression editor.

The line under a suggestion says where it came from, such as Used in 3 other steps that read Freight, The columns of Freight, or for a join, These keys come from another join step in this project that joins the same two tables. When the keys only have similar names, it says These columns have similar names in both tables. Check them before you save.

Weave suggests only from steps you can see, and leaves out anything that would stop the step saving. A field that already has a value, and a read-only form, get no suggestion. The column mapping is suggested on new steps only.

Suggest settings, in a step’s right-click menu, the command palette and the dock’s / list, asks for every suggestion on the step at once.

What Comes Next

After you add a step to the canvas, a What next? button appears to its right. Click it for up to three tiles, each a kind of step, such as Summarize, Look up or Export: CSV. A tile opens that step’s form, filled in and not yet saved.

Weave suggests the steps that most often come next in this project. A project with little history gets common next steps instead. What comes next? in the right-click menu, command palette and dock does the same.

Count the Rows Before You Save

The strip above Save in a step form says how the step last ran, such as Last run 46,800 rows, ended 11 Nov 06:12 UTC, or Not run yet.

Click Count rows to count what the step would write with the settings in front of you, without saving or running it:

This change: 46,912 rows (last run 46,800; usually 45,100 to 47,300, compared with the last 8 runs)

Click Show the rows for the first 20 rows. A line under the count says how far the step reaches: click Show the steps or Show the dashboards to see what reads its output.

Counting works for Extract, Lookup, Join (inner, outer and anti), Union and Union All steps. Other steps say No preview for this step type yet.
A step that can’t be counted says why, such as a table it reads that hasn’t been built yet.
The count stops after 5 seconds.
If row access limits what you can see, the count is of the rows you can see, and says so.

Preview in a step’s right-click menu, the command palette or the dock gives the same last-run line and count.

See a Step’s Data on the Canvas

Rest the pointer on a step that writes a table. A small window shows the table, its rows and when the step last ran, with:

Show the first rows — reads the first 10 rows, as you, and keeps them with the time they were read.
Open table — opens the table in Table Explorer.
Ask Weave — opens the dock on the table.

Anyone who can read the project’s tables sees this, including members who can only view the workflow.

Checked When You Run

When you run a workflow, with Run Workflow, a range of steps or Run Selected, Weave checks its settings and structure, the same checks as Check makes on them. If all is well, you see nothing. If something is wrong, a strip above the canvas says Weave found 2 problems in the workflow “Month-End Close”, followed by the first problem:

Review opens the full result in the Weave Check window.
Stop run stops the run. It appears while the run is going, when a problem is an error rather than a warning.

Each step with a problem gets a mark on the canvas, which names the problem when you point at it. Weave checks again only after you’ve saved a change to a step or to the workflow, and raises the strip only for problems it hasn’t already shown you. Lineage, warehouse columns and row-level security are still checked when you click Check. Point at Check to see when the settings were last checked.

When a Step Fails

A step whose last run failed has a red dot on the canvas: Last run failed. Select it to see why. Select it, and the Last Run Error card in the Inspector has a button:

Fix, when Weave can propose a fix. See Fixing Workflow Errors with AI.
Ask Weave otherwise, and on a warning. Weave explains the error, and answers the errors it knows without calling an AI model.

The ⋯ beside it holds the other Weave actions. Error messages elsewhere offer Ask Weave too: the Action Failed dialog, a step that couldn’t be saved, a workflow that couldn’t start, and a CSV import that failed.

Weave Working on a Workflow

While Weave runs a job on a workflow, such as a build or a fix, its icon joins the people viewing the workflow on the canvas. Point at it to see Weave, working for and the name of the person it’s working for.

The canvas toolbar’s comments button opens the workflow’s comments. See Comments and @Weave.