Definition
Paused And Failed Flow Interviews is a Setup page that displays all Flow interviews that are currently paused (waiting for user input or a scheduled resume) or have failed due to errors. Administrators can view error details, resume paused interviews, or delete stuck interviews to free up system resources.
Real-World Example
The admin at CloudSync checks Paused And Failed Flow Interviews and finds 25 failed interviews from a Record-Triggered Flow on the Case object. The error details show a "FIELD_CUSTOM_VALIDATION_EXCEPTION" caused by a validation rule conflict. She fixes the validation rule, then bulk-retries the failed interviews to process the stuck Case records.
Why Paused And Failed Flow Interviews Matters
Paused And Failed Flow Interviews is a Setup page that displays all Flow interviews (individual instances of a Flow execution) that are currently paused or have encountered errors. Paused interviews occur when a Flow reaches a Pause element waiting for a specific date, time, or user action to resume, while failed interviews represent executions that hit unhandled errors such as validation rule conflicts, governor limit exceptions, or null pointer errors. Administrators use this page to diagnose failures by viewing error details, resume paused interviews, delete stuck interviews that are consuming system resources, and identify patterns that indicate broader systemic issues in their Flow automation.
As organizations build more complex automation with Flows, the Paused And Failed Flow Interviews page becomes a critical monitoring tool. An org with dozens of Record-Triggered Flows, Scheduled Flows, and Screen Flows will inevitably accumulate failed interviews from edge cases — a new validation rule that conflicts with an existing Flow, a field value that wasn't anticipated, or a governor limit hit during high-volume processing. Without regular monitoring, failed interviews pile up and can mask important data processing failures: records that should have been updated, emails that should have been sent, or approvals that should have been routed. Proactive administrators schedule weekly reviews of this page and build alert mechanisms — such as a scheduled Flow that counts failed interviews and sends a Slack notification when the count exceeds a threshold — to catch problems before they snowball.
How Organizations Use Paused And Failed Flow Interviews
- CloudSync Technologies — CloudSync's admin discovers 25 failed Flow interviews on the Case object caused by a FIELD_CUSTOM_VALIDATION_EXCEPTION. Investigation reveals a newly added validation rule conflicts with the Record-Triggered Flow. She updates the validation rule to exclude automated processes, then bulk-retries the 25 failed interviews to process the stuck Case records.
- Meridian Logistics — Meridian Logistics has a Scheduled Flow that pauses for 7 days before sending a follow-up email to leads who haven't responded. Their admin monitors the Paused And Failed Flow Interviews page weekly and notices 150 paused interviews. Upon review, 30 correspond to leads that have since been converted, so she deletes those paused interviews to prevent sending irrelevant follow-up emails.
- Beacon Financial Services — Beacon Financial builds a monitoring Flow that runs daily and queries the FlowInterview object for failed records. When the count exceeds 10 in a 24-hour period, it sends an alert to the admin Slack channel with the Flow name and error summary. This early warning system caught a critical failure in their loan approval Flow within hours instead of the usual week-long discovery cycle.