Time Travel

MESA's Time Travel feature is a way to bring historical data through a MESA workflow.

🎥 Watch how to run Time Travel on a workflow:

MESA Time Travel

Please ensure your workflow is set up properly and has been tested before running Time Travel. Using Time Travel without properly vetting and testing a workflow can lead to unintended results.

Time Travel is currently only available for workflows using the following triggers: Shopify Order, Shopify Customer, Shopify Product, Shopify Refund, Recharge, Infinite Options, Uploadery, Tracktor, Gorgias, and Salesforce.

For our Recharge integration, Time Travel only supports the following triggers: Customer Created, Customer Updated, Address Created, Address Updated, Subscription Created, Subscription Updated, Onetime Created, Onetime Updated, Charge Created, Charge Updated, Order Created, Order Updated, Product Created, Product Updated.

Running Time Travel

Navigate to the Time Travel tab that can be found under the Activity tab of a workflow.

Before you can run Time Travel you will need to:

1. Test the workflow to make sure that the workflow will run as expected. Once you begin Time Travel, it will run to completion so errors or mistakes in the workflow could lead to unintended consequences.

See the Is it safe to run Time Travel on my workflow? section below for more information.

Please keep in mind that at this time MESA does not have a way to stop the activity from processing after the time travel is underway.

2. Enable the workflow.

Is it appropriate to run Time Travel on my workflow?

The answer to this question is most likely "it depends" because of MESA's flexibility and the enormous creativity of all MESA's users! However, some short questions can quickly vet many common scenarios.

Question: Is my workflow's final action a blank state?

If the end goal of your workflow is something like sending information to an empty Google Sheets or a new service that you are filling out, it is probably appropriate to run Time Travel since information would not get duplicated or overwritten.

Question: Does my workflow's final action rely on "up to the second, real-time" information?

If the service or application that you are sending information to in your workflow requires up-to-date/real-time data reliability, it is probably NOT appropriate to send historical records with Time Travel.

Question: Does my workflow's final action already have information related to the historical records?

It depends on the service or application in question. But in many cases, if customer or order data already exists in the service or application, it is probably NOT appropriate to send historical records. A Time Travel will most likely duplicate information.

Question: Are my historical Shopify records newer/more up-to-date than the data at my workflow's final action?

Even though information may already exist in a service or application, what is in Shopify might be newer. Therefore, it COULD BE appropriate to send to the final action. In these cases, it would still be important to limit the potential impact of the Time Travel by making sure to only send recent records, or add a Filter by MESA step to check on external data to see if it already exists.

✋ If you still have questions or need help determining if Time Travel will work for your use case, please don't hesitate to reach out! Email us at [e-mail].

Configuring a Time Travel

Choosing a time frame

Edit the date filter to find the appropriate records for your use case.

As an optional feature, you can choose All time if you'd like as many orders as possible or you can choose Last 30 days for all records from the last 30 days.

For Custom, you can select a range of dates (in your browser's timezone) for the specified records.

Previewing results

You can see potential records under the Filters for Time Travel. It is highly recommended to make sure that the preview reflects the time frame and number of records you chose in the filters.

Starting Time Travel

Once you are satisfied that your filtered values are correct, start the Time Travel by clicking the Start Time Travel button. The Time Travel, depending on the number of records you selected, can take anywhere from seconds to hours to complete. The Time Travel will process records from newest to oldest. Feel free to close your screen if you'd rather not wait. An email will be sent to you once your Time Travel is complete.

If you suspect that your Time Travel has timed out or you have any questions throughout the process, please contact us at [e-mail]