Debug Identity Cloud end-user journeys

You can debug end-user journeys in your 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 Identity Cloud admin UI, go to Journeys, and select a journey.
Hover over the journey schematic, and click Edit.
In the journey editor, click the debug button (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. For more information, refer to 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 Identity Cloud admin UI:
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 displays an initial debug step.
3. If the browser blocks the pop-up window, unblock it:
  - 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 documentation.
4. Refresh the browser window. The pop-up window should now appear.
5. Arrange the windows so that they are both clearly visible.
6. 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 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 journey node. Because debug nodes can change the state of node information, inserting them between journey nodes can cause a problems if a journey node expects to access node information in a specific state.

For example, if a journey node adds a password to secure state, and the following debug node reads that password from secure state, the password is moved to transient state. Then, if the next journey node expects the password to be in secure state, and tries to read it from there, an error occurs.