Find and fix experience issues
See which live experiences are failing for users, fix them, and close them out.
Table of Contents
The Issues page lists every step that triggered an error, across all your live experiences, with a suggested fix for each. Use it to find broken experiences (also called step errors or experience errors), fix them, and mark them resolved.
Get alerts about experience errors. Appcues also watches your live experiences and raises a recommendation when one starts failing for users, either a sudden spike or a slower climb over several days. See Experience issue spike alerts.
How issues work
Appcues groups errors into issues. Each issue is one error message on one step of one experience, so the same message in two experiences counts as two issues.
Issues are reported for live Flows, Embeds, Pins, Banners, Launchpads and NPS surveys. Legacy Flows don't report issues here.
Common errors related to experiences:
| Type | What happened | Suggested fix |
|---|---|---|
| Element not found | The step's selector matched nothing on the page, so the step didn't show. The page may have changed since the element was picked. | Preview the experience and step through to this step. If it shows for you but not your users, the element may depend on who's signed in. If it doesn't show, pick the element again in the builder. Prefer an element with a stable ID or data attribute. |
| Matched several elements | The selector matched more than one element, so the step couldn't tell which one to attach to. | Pick the element again in the builder and make the selector specific to one element, for example with an ID, a data attribute or the element's text. |
| Couldn't place the step | The element was found, but the step couldn't be placed beside it. | Open the page and check the element is visible, with room around it, at your users' screen sizes. Hidden, collapsed or off-screen elements can't hold a step, so attach it to a visible element nearby. |
| Other step error | A step failed for a reason other than finding its element. | Read the message. Preview the experience to see whether it happens for you. |
| Experience error | The experience as a whole failed, not one step. | Read the message. If it started after a recent publish, review what changed in that version. |
| Element disappeared (informational) | The step showed, then its element left the page while the step was open. This is usually the page re-rendering. | If the page replaces the element as it loads, attach the step to a nearby element that stays. A low count can be normal on busy pages. |
| Page changed (informational) | The visitor left the page before the step could finish. | No action is needed. If it happens on most visits, check the step isn't set to show on a page visitors leave right away, such as a redirect. |
Find issues
- Click Experiences, then Issues. The page lists open issues from the last 7 days across all your live experiences. New issues can take a few minutes to appear.
- Read the totals at the top: Issues, Experiences affected and Occurrences. Most affected lists the experiences affecting the most users.
- Narrow the list:
- Status: the Open (the default), Resolved, Ignored and All tabs. Each shows how many issues it holds.
- Time: the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.
- Severity: Actionable only (the default) or Include informational. See Issue types.
- Type: one or more issue types.
- Experience: one or more experiences.
- Click the Occurrences, Users or Last seen column to sort by it.
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Check one experience
Each experience has its own Issues tab, next to Settings and Analytics. When the experience has open, actionable issues, the tab shows how many, up to 99+.
- Open the experience and click its Issues tab. It lists the experience's open issues from the last 7 days.
- Read the totals: Issues, Occurrences and Users shown. Users shown counts everyone who started the experience in that window, whether or not they hit an issue. Click View users to see them.
- Narrow the list with the same filters as the Issues page, minus Experience. The Step column shows which step failed. Click Reset filters to go back to the defaults.
Issues are reported only while an experience is published and showing to users. On an unpublished experience, the tab says so.
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Read an issue
Click an issue. Its details open beside the list:
- Status: Open, Resolved or Ignored, with the buttons to change it. A resolved or ignored issue shows why and when, for example "Possibly fixed: target updated in the builder".
- Occurrences, with how many per affected user, and Affected users, with the share of users who reached the step. For example, "65% of 63 users who reached this step".
- First seen and Last seen. "> 7 days ago" under First seen means the issue was already happening before the Time filter's window.
- The Experience, the Step, and the Latest page where it happened.
- For element issues, the selector that failed.
- The Suggested fix for its type.
- More details: the raw Message, the Experience status, its Build URL, and when and by whom it was Last modified.
To test the selector on a page yourself, copy the console check under the selector. Open the page, paste the check into your browser's developer console, and press Enter. It outlines every element the selector matches and returns how many there are. Zero means the element isn't on that page. More than one means the selector is too broad.
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Click View users or View occurrences to open Issue activity:
- The Users tab lists everyone affected. Add columns such as User ID or another user property, Step reached, Time in experience, Last action and Date shown. Click Copy IDs or Download users CSV to use the list elsewhere, or Ask Appcues AI to ask about these users.
- The Occurrences tab lists each time it happened, with the user, page and time. Only the most recent occurrences are listed.
To share the issue with a teammate or support, click the copy-link button. The link opens the same issue.
Fix an issue
Each issue's details offer the tools for its fix:
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- Open in builder opens the experience in the builder, so you can pick the element again. You need the Appcues Chrome Extension.
- View step opens the step in the experience's Design tab.
- Preview runs the experience with the extension, or opens its permalink, so you can check whether the step shows for you.
- Ask Appcues AI opens a chat with the issue already loaded. Appcues AI can explain the cause and walk you through the fix.
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For broken or fragile selectors, see Troubleshoot element targeting.
Issue types
The Severity filter hides informational issues by default. They usually aren't a real problem and don't count toward the totals or an experience's tab count.
| Type | What happened | Suggested fix |
|---|---|---|
| Element not found | The step's selector matched nothing on the page, so the step didn't show. The page may have changed since the element was picked. | Preview the experience and step through to this step. If it shows for you but not your users, the element may depend on who's signed in. If it doesn't show, pick the element again in the builder. Prefer an element with a stable ID or data attribute. |
| Matched several elements | The selector matched more than one element, so the step couldn't tell which one to attach to. | Pick the element again in the builder and make the selector specific to one element, for example with an ID, a data attribute or the element's text. |
| Couldn't place the step | The element was found, but the step couldn't be placed beside it. | Open the page and check the element is visible, with room around it, at your users' screen sizes. Hidden, collapsed or off-screen elements can't hold a step, so attach it to a visible element nearby. |
| Other step error | A step failed for a reason other than finding its element. | Read the message. Preview the experience to see whether it happens for you. |
| Experience error | The experience as a whole failed, not one step. | Read the message. If it started after a recent publish, review what changed in that version. |
| Element disappeared (informational) | The step showed, then its element left the page while the step was open. This is usually the page re-rendering. | If the page replaces the element as it loads, attach the step to a nearby element that stays. A low count can be normal on busy pages. |
| Page changed (informational) | The visitor left the page before the step could finish. | No action is needed. If it happens on most visits, check the step isn't set to show on a page visitors leave right away, such as a redirect. |
Resolve or ignore an issue
Each issue is Open, Resolved or Ignored. Resolve an issue yourself when you fixed it, including when the fix was in your own app's code rather than the experience.
- Click an issue, or click ⋯ on its row.
- Click Resolve… once you've fixed it, or Ignore… to set aside a known false alarm.
- If you're ignoring it, choose how long under Ignore for: Until I reopen it, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or Until a date….
- Add a note if you want one, then click Resolve issue or Ignore issue. The issue moves to Resolved or Ignored.
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To move an issue back, find it under Resolved or Ignored and click Reopen. A reopened issue stays open for at least 7 days. Users with read-only access can't change an issue's status.
Appcues also changes an issue's status on its own:
- An open issue with no new occurrences for 7 days moves to Resolved.
- A resolved issue that happens again moves back to Open.
- An ignored issue moves back to Open when its ignore period ends. If it doesn't happen again within 7 days, it resolves.
- When you republish an experience with a new element on a step, that step's element issues move to Resolved with Possibly fixed: target updated in the builder. If the step fails again, the issue reopens.
Prevent issues for specific audiences
If the element only exists for certain users (for example, admins), target the experience to the users who can see that element. If the element only shows on desktop, target the experience to Device type: Desktop.
Still stuck?
Collect the following and contact support:
- The link to the issue (click the copy-link button in its details).
- An affected User ID.
- The page URL where the issue occurs.
- A screenshot or screen recording of the problem.
- Any console errors in the browser's developer tools.