topic Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history? in Data Engineering

How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

robertozsr — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:29:04 GMT

Good morning everyone!

I would greatly appreciate your help with a frustrating situation I've run into.

I was renaming a pipeline while I had one of its Switch Case activities open in the editor. When I saved, it deleted all the other activities and now the pipeline only shows that one Switch Case — all the rest of the logic is gone.

Unfortunately I don't have Git integration enabled on my workspace. However, I do have a successful run history from a couple of days ago when the pipeline was complete. When I navigate to that run, it shows "Pipeline was modified after this run" and I cannot find a way to restore a previous version — unlike Notebooks which have a built-in version history.

My questions are:

Is there any way to recover the previous pipeline configuration from the run history?
To avoid this kind of disaster in the future, what is the recommended approach — enabling Git integration, regularly exporting the JSON definition, or both?

The pipeline had quite complex logic that took a significant amount of time to build, so any help would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you in advance 🙏

Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

Olufemi7 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:42:14 GMT

@robertozsr,
No- you cannot restore a pipeline configuration from run history.

What you can do

Open a previous successful run in Monitor
Use the activity run graph to understand execution flow (sequence, branching, conditions)
Inspect each activity’s Inputs/Outputs to reconstruct:

Parameters
Expressions
Dataset references

This allows you to manually rebuild the pipeline, but not restore it.

What is not possible

No rollback/version restore from run history
No stored pipeline JSON in monitoring
Run history only keeps execution metadata, not pipeline definitions

Microsoft Docs (Monitoring pipelines):
Visually monitor Azure Data Factory

Microsoft Docs (Programmatic monitoring):
Programmatically monitor an Azure Data Factory

Best practice

Enable Git integration (e.g., Azure DevOps or GitHub) → version control & rollback
Export pipeline JSON (ARM template) before major changes → backup

Summary

Run history supports execution analysis, not version recovery.
Without Git or backups, the only option is manual reconstruction.

Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

tayloramy — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:19:19 GMT

Hi @robertozsr,

That is a really odd bug. I'd recommend opening a Microsoft support ticket to report it.

As for restoring, without having any git version control set up, your only option is to re-create it. There is no built in version tracking for pipelines.

Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

robertozsr — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:12:48 GMT

Hello guys, I manage to fix it. There was only a bug where it deleted all the conneciton, variables, and parameters setting but the rest was there. Now I will set up a git integration! Thanks!

Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

robertozsr — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:16:07 GMT

Regariding the export of the pipeline, when I do the export, I have tried to import again in a clean new pipeline by clicking the icon import, but when it opens the file explorer the file with extension .json is not visible. Then how to import an exported pipeline?

Re: How to recover a pipeline configuration from run history?

robertozsr — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:17:37 GMT

proably in view > edit json code? elimnate what is inside, and past everything insde?