Weekday Census sync health digest for your data ops channel

Every weekday morning, we walk your Census syncs, spot the ones failing or degrading, and post a triaged digest into Slack.

Agentic Task
CensusSlack BotOperationsDaily DigestsNotifications & Alerts
PromptCreate

Every weekday at 8:30am, post a Census reverse-ETL health digest into our #data-ops Slack channel so the team spots broken syncs before they cause problems downstream.

Trigger: cron, weekdays (Monday through Friday) at 8:30am local time.

Use Census List Syncs to pull every sync in the workspace, paginating until you have collected all of them. Skip any sync that is currently paused so the digest only covers work that should be running. For every active sync, call Census List Sync Runs to fetch the most recent runs (the last three to five is enough to see the trend).

Inspect the run bodies directly. Census does not surface run-level failures as HTTP errors: a failed run comes back with status "failed" plus error_code, error_message, and error_detail inside the run object. Read those fields, along with the run's record counts (records_processed, records_updated, rejected/failed records) and the elapsed runtime.

Group syncs into three buckets: (1) failed since the last digest, meaning the most recent run has status "failed"; (2) degraded, meaning rejected-record counts are climbing run over run or the latest run's runtime is a large jump over the previous average; (3) healthy, meaning recent runs succeeded cleanly. Order the digest with failed first, degraded second, healthy last, because failed syncs are the biggest concerns.

Write a short narrative that leads with the biggest concerns. For each failed sync, include the sync name, a link back to its Census UI URL (https://app.getcensus.com/syncs/<sync_id>, or https://app-eu.getcensus.com/syncs/<sync_id> for EU-hosted workspaces), and quote the top error_message verbatim inside a code block so on-call engineers can search for it. For each degraded sync, name the specific signal in numbers ("rejected records climbed from 12 to 240" or "last run took 47 minutes vs a 12-minute average"). Collapse the healthy bucket to a one-line count so the digest stays scannable.

Send the digest to the #data-ops channel using Slack Bot Send a Message. If nothing has failed and nothing is degraded, still post a one-line "all clear" so the team knows the check ran and the workflow is alive.

Additional information

What does this prompt do?
  • Groups your Census syncs into healthy, degraded, and failed since yesterday so the team knows exactly where to look first
  • Quotes the top error message verbatim and links each failing sync back to Census so anyone can jump in and fix it
  • Skips paused syncs on purpose, so the digest stays actionable and never nags you about work you already turned off
  • Posts to a Slack channel you choose at whatever weekday time suits your team
What do I need to use this?
  • A Census workspace with syncs configured (Census is now Fivetran Activations, the same connection covers both)
  • A Slack workspace and the channel where the digest should land
How can I customize it?
  • Change the schedule to a different weekday time, or run it seven days a week
  • Send it to a different Slack channel: a per-team channel, a DM, or a private on-call room
  • Tune what counts as degraded (rejected-record counts or runtime overruns) to match your team's tolerance

Frequently asked questions

Will it wake me up on weekends?
No. It runs on weekday mornings only. You can flip it to seven days a week if that fits your team better.
What about syncs I have paused on purpose?
Skipped entirely. The digest stays focused on syncs that are supposed to be running, so you never get nagged about work you already turned off.
Can it call out a specific person or team?
Yes. Add @-mentions in the message or route the digest to a channel your on-call group already watches.
Does it work with Fivetran Activations?
Yes. Census was acquired by Fivetran and is now branded as Fivetran Activations, and the same connection covers both names.
What counts as degraded?
Runs where rejected-record counts are climbing from the previous run, or where the run took noticeably longer than the recent average. You can adjust the sensitivity.

Stop finding out about broken syncs from angry sales reps.

Get a triaged Slack digest of your Census sync health every weekday morning, before the workday starts.