workflow-failure-issue

Workflow failure issue

Reusable GitHub Actions workflow that tracks the pass/fail state of another workflow (typically a scheduled one) by opening, commenting on, and closing a GitHub issue in the calling repository. The workflow runs only when the calling repository belongs to the open-telemetry organization, preventing runs in forks from creating failure issues.

This is useful because GitHub notifies only a single user of scheduled-workflow failures. Per the GitHub docs on scheduled workflows:

Notifications for scheduled workflows are sent to the user who last modified the cron syntax in the workflow file.

By opening a tracking issue instead, the failure is visible to the whole team.

Behavior:

• On failure, if no tracking issue is open, a new issue titled Workflow failed: <workflow name> (#<run number>) is created.
• On a subsequent failure while an issue is already open, a comment linking to the failing run is added.
• On success, any open tracking issue is closed.

How to use

Add a final job to the workflow you want to monitor. It must run after the jobs you care about, use if: always() so it also runs when they fail, and grant issues: write:

jobs:
  # ... your jobs (e.g. build) ...

  workflow-failure-issue:
    permissions:
      issues: write
    needs:
      - build
    if: always()
    uses: open-telemetry/shared-workflows/.github/workflows/workflow-failure-issue.yml@<sha-or-tag>
    with:
      success: ${{ needs.build.result == 'success' }}

Pin <sha-or-tag> to a commit SHA or release tag in this repository.

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
success	boolean	yes	Whether the monitored jobs succeeded. Pass true to close any open tracking issue, false to open or comment on one.