Recover from a problem in Delegate
What to do when your Delegate session ends, Beyond Accounts is unreachable, an action is refused, a record changed under you, or an external outcome is unknown, without losing work or repeating an action.
- Availability: Experimental
- Evidence: Read from source
- How-to guide
Read this first
Three rules cover almost every situation in Delegate:
- An outage is not a sign-out, and a sign-out is not a refusal. The messages are different on purpose. Read which one you got.
- Your typed text stays in the form when a save fails. Do not reload before you copy it.
- Never repeat an external action to find out whether it worked. Launching an agent or requesting a deployment twice can start two. Delegate hands an unknown outcome to a person and never sends it again by itself.
Your session ended
A Delegate session that came from Beyond Accounts ends when the Accounts session it came from expires, is signed out (there, or everywhere), or is revoked, and when the account is suspended. It never outlives the login it came from.
What you see depends on what you were doing:
| Situation | What you see | What is preserved |
|---|---|---|
| You were only reading, or a form was empty | The sign-in screen, with "Your session ended. Sign in again to continue." | Nothing was in progress |
| You had typed text in a form | You stay on the page. The form shows "Your session ended. Sign in again in another tab, then retry; your text stays here." | Your text stays in the form, because Delegate does not leave a screen with unsaved text |
To recover with text in a form:
- Leave the tab as it is. Do not reload it.
- Open Delegate in another tab and sign in with Continue with Beyond Accounts.
- Go back to the first tab and submit the form again.
As a precaution, copy long text somewhere before retrying.
What is and is not kept
- Text you typed lives in the open form only. It is not stored in the browser or on the server until the save succeeds.
- Moving to another screen with unsaved text asks first: "You have unsaved text on this screen. Discard it and continue?" Choosing Cancel keeps you where you were. Reloading or closing the tab triggers the browser's own warning.
- Reloading the page, closing the tab or accepting that question discards the text. There is no draft recovery afterwards.
- A suspended account cannot sign in again, so the second tab will not help. See suspension.
Beyond Accounts is unreachable
When Delegate cannot reach Beyond Accounts, it keeps honoring the last thing it read for a short tolerance, so a momentary failure does not sign everyone out. Past that tolerance, sessions that came from Accounts are refused with a distinct state, not with a sign-in error:
"Beyond Accounts is not answering. Nothing was changed; try again shortly."
- While the application loads, it appears under the heading "Beyond Delegate is not responding." with Try again. The sign-in form is not shown, because signing in again would not help and would tell you something untrue about your session.
- Inside a form, it appears as the form's error and your text stays.
- Elsewhere, it appears in the page's status message.
What to do: wait, then choose Try again or submit again. Do not look for another way in: when an installation signs people in through Accounts, that is the only way, and the access key is refused. When Accounts answers again, Delegate recovers by itself. If Accounts reports a gap in what Delegate could read, every session that came from Accounts is ended and you sign in again.
This is different from "The server could not be reached. Check your connection and try again." and "The server took too long to answer. Try again.", which mean your browser could not reach Delegate itself.
An action was refused
| You see | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "Your role does not allow this action." | Your role, or your grant in this project, does not include it | Ask a workspace administrator for the permission. Signing in again changes nothing |
| "That record does not exist or you cannot access it." | The record does not exist, or you may not see it. Delegate gives the same answer in both cases so that it never confirms what exists in a project that is not yours | Check the address; ask for access to the project |
| "This project could not be loaded." | The same, for a whole project | Same |
| "This work is assigned to someone else." | Only the assigned agent can do that | Nothing to do as a person |
Something changed while you were looking
Delegate refuses a change that was prepared against an older state, instead of overwriting someone else's work. Nothing is lost on either side.
| You see | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "This operation changed while you were reviewing it. Refresh and review it again." | A deployment attempt moved on while your reconciliation form was open | Choose Refresh, read the attempt again. You may have nothing left to do |
| "Someone changed this request while you were editing. Read the current revision and try again." | The request has a newer revision than the one you started from | Copy your text, refresh, apply it to the current revision |
| "This action is not available in the current state. Refresh the page." | The record already moved to another state | Refresh |
| "Someone else already took this item. Refresh the page." | Another person or agent claimed it first | Refresh |
| "A selected definition changed. Create a planned release using its current revision." | A requirement was refined while you were planning | Create the release again |
| "The definition changed after this proposal was written. Propose the refinement again." | The same, for a refinement | Propose it again |
| "Saved, but the view could not be updated. Refresh to see the current state." | The change was saved. Only the re-read failed | Refresh. Do not submit again |
An outcome is unknown
Two things can end in Needs attention: an agent dispatch and a test publication. In both, Delegate sent something to a provider and does not know whether it took effect.
What Delegate does: it stops, records the state, lists it in Needs my attention, and waits for a person. It never re-fires the action.
What you do: look at the provider first, then record what you found. For a dispatch, Resolve this dispatch. For a publication, Resume verification with the run number. Both record your note and who you are.
Delegate itself does not answer
"Beyond Delegate is not responding." with another sentence under it, such as "The server failed while handling the request. Nothing was saved.", means Delegate's own server failed or is unreachable. Choose Try again. If you had text in a form, it is still there as long as you do not reload.
Next action
Still stuck? Find the symptom in the troubleshooting index, or, if the problem is signing in, in Accounts troubleshooting.
Related: Sessions and single sign-on · Work status vocabulary · Supported limits