Debug end-user journeys

You can debug end-user journeys in your PingOne Advanced Identity Cloud development environment as you create them. By setting a journey to debug mode, you can view information stored in shared, transient, and secure state, as you navigate the journey. This lets you confirm that information is being passed correctly from node to node in the journey.

Enable debug mode

Enable debug mode to log debug information as you navigate a journey.

In the Advanced Identity Cloud admin console, go to Journeys, and select a journey.
Hover over the journey schematic, and click Edit.
In the journey editor, click the debug button build_circle (on the top right of the toolbar). The Debug panel opens.
In the Debug panel, enable Debug mode.
Select Enable Debug Popup to display debug logs as you navigate the journey. Learn more in view debug information in a popup window.
Click Save to save your journey with debug mode enabled.

Use debug mode only in your development environment.
Before promoting a journey to your staging environment, ensure that you have deactivated debug mode and saved the journey. Journeys that are in debug mode are clearly marked with a Debug label in the journey list view.

View debug information in a pop-up window

View debug log output in a separate pop-up window, as you navigate a journey.

In the Advanced Identity Cloud admin console:
1. Enable debug mode.
2. In the journey editor, copy the end-user journey URL from the Preview URL field (on the right, above the top toolbar).
In a new incognito browser window (or a separate browser):
1. Go to the end-user journey URL that you copied in the previous step.
2. The browser window should display an initial debug step in a new pop-up window. The pop-up window’s title is Debug Popup.
If the pop-up window doesn’t display, your browser might be blocking it:
1. Unblock it by following the instructions for your browser:
  - For Chrome, follow the instructions under the "Allow pop-ups and redirects from a site" section in this support article: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95472.
  - For other supported browsers, consult the browser’s documentation.
2. Refresh the browser window. The pop-up window should now display. If it doesn’t display, repeat the previous step and ensure that your browser isn’t blocking pop-ups.
Arrange the browser window and the pop-up window so that they’re both clearly visible.
Navigate the journey in the browser window, and monitor the debug output for each step in the pop-up window.

Shared, transient, and secure state

Shared state: Used by nodes to store non-sensitive information required during the authentication flow.
Transient state: Used by nodes to store sensitive information that Advanced Identity Cloud encrypts on round trips to the client.
Secure state: Used by nodes to store decrypted transient state.

When debug mode is enabled, debug nodes are temporarily inserted between each node in the journey. Because debug nodes can change the state of node information, inserting them between each node in the journey can cause a problem if a later node expects to access information in a specific state.

An example is when a node adds a password to transient state. The following debug node reads that password from transient state, which removes it. The next node in the journey expects to read the password from transient state, and when it tries to do so, this fails and causes an error.