Websydian v6.1 online documentationOnline documentation - WebsydianExpress v3.5

Message log

Overview

This is the reference documentation for the administration menu item: Utilities→Message Log

This function gives the administrator an overview of any critical errors which has occurred in the system.

These errors, warnings and information can be thrown by WebsydianExpress as well as by business processes created in the CA:Plex development environment.

Categories

1. Error

By far the most messages fall into this category. These messages will be thrown if WebsydianExpress encounters inconsistencies in the database, missing objects etc.

No errors ought to be thrown in an active production environment.

2. Warning

A few messages have this category. This category is used when a problem has been encountered, which is not critical for the functionality of WebsydianExpress.

An example could be that an explanatory text should be shown - but could not be found in the database. The user will typically not even notice this - as the text just does not appear in the browser.

3. Informative

A few messages have this category. These are messages not caused by the system.

The informative messages can be thrown in certain situations, where users are trying to gain access to functionality they are not authorized for.

You can find a list of the messages thrown by WebsydianExpress here.

Grid Page

The grid page shows information about the messages that the business processes has written to the log. The messages written to log comes from all sites and can be filtered.

The level of severity of the message is shown by an icon, green, yellow or red.

The grid is ordered on the date and time (descending) that the message was logged.

Basic search and filtering

The basic search and selection criteria is always shown. You can search on "Date", "Time", "Severity", "Category" and "Handled" by entering the date/time or select in the combo boxes.

Advanced search and filtering

When clicking on the Advanced button more selection criteria is shown. You can search on "Site", "Message type", "User login name", "Message ID" and "Session".

When you select Message log from the menu, the "Site" is set to the current site. In order to see global messages or messages from another site, you must click on the button Advanced and then select the required site.

Messages and their relation

The messages that are logged in the Message log comes from either the WebsydianExpress runtime or from business processes.

Messages can have a relation to other messages, e.g. a specific message can be the parent of other messages. In the import functionality in the Site Structure, the functionality will in case of errors create a parent message that states that errors was found the then all the actual errors will be children of that message.

It is possible that a given message can be both a parent and a child message at the same time.

As described below, when searching for messages and certain fields are filled child messages will be included in the list of found messages.

When this is the case, the message "Parent and child messages shown" is displayed just the window heading. When child messages are not included the message "Only parent messages shown" is displayed.

Searching for entries in the log

Normally only parent messages are show in the grid. If the parent does have children, a button labeled Expand is shown in front of the line.

When one or more of the following is true the search result will include child messages:

The button Expand

Some messages in the log is a group of messages. This is indicated by a button named Expand that is shown in front of the parent line. You can click on this button and the dialog shown displays the entire group of messages.

View

The page shows the details about the message.

Message Information

This section displays information about the message, such as the severity level, date and time it was written to the log, the type name of the message.

Session Information

This section displays session information about the message, such as session number, site key and logged in user.

Message Text

This section displays the raw message text that is, before parameters was inserted.

Parameters

This section displays the parameters that will be inserted into the formatted message. These parameters was saved by the business process that wrote the message to the message log.

Show Parent message

When you have a list of messages and this list includes child messages a button "Show Parent Message" is shown in front of the line. Clicking this button will display a dialog that contains the parent message and all the children of this parent.

When child messages will be included in the grid on the page, the text "Showing parent and child messages" is shown just below the heading of the page.

Expand

The page shows a parent message and all its child messages.

Message Information

This section displays information about the message, such as "Severity", "Timestamp", "Type name".

Session Information

This section displays session information about the message. This includes "Session", "Site key", "Site description", "User login name" and "User name".

Please note, that if the message is registered before a session was created then there is no Session information.

That means no "Session" number, no "User login name" and no "User name".

In some instances messages can be logged before the site is determined giving that no "Site key" and "Site description" is registered.

Messages where Session and/or Site information is missing from can only be seen by selecting *Global or *All in the Site selection drop down. This drop down is visible after having clicked on the Advanced search button.

Message Text

This section of the screen displays the complete parent message.

List of child messages

This section of the screen displays the list of child messages.

Please note, that these child messages are also shown in the main window if search criteria match. On this page all messages of the parent are show.

Fields

The following fields are used on the pages:

Severity

The level of severity for each message is shown by a colored circle:

Icon Description
Error: This icon is displayed in front of messages that contains an error. You must take actions to solve the problem causing this error in order for the business process to execute without problems in the future.
Warning: This icon is displayed in front of messages that contains a warning. This could mean that you should take actions to avoid this message in the future.
Information: This icon is displayed in front of messages that are informational.
Message

The text of the message. The text gives a short explanation of the specific message. In the situations, where specific information about the programs or data, which has caused the error is available, information identifying this will be part of the message.

Timestamp

The date and time that the message was written to the log.

Message ID

A unique ID for each message. In some situations a number of messages are thrown as result of one error. In this case the thrown message can refer to each other using this ID.

Category

Indicates the severity of the message. See more above.

Message type

The type of message represented by the type id.

Session

The session number from which the message occurred.

Site

The site code under which the session ran. The name of the site is also displayed in order for you the easily identify the site.

User

Shows the user (if a user was logged in) that used the session.

 

In some cases the messages can contain information about data entries, which does not have a recognizable text identification. If this happens the text will typically refer to e.g. "a link with surrogate nnn".

To find more information about this data entry - press the "Surrogate" menu item.

This leads you to a page, where you can enter the surrogate and the type of the data entry. This page is described here.

Handled

The checkbox indicated if an administrator has handled the message. The objective of this field is to be able to let others see that action has been taken on the message in question. By searching for unhandled messages you can get a quick overview over the message and what possibly needs attention.

Related information

Messages
Maintain messages.
Message log
Background information about Message log
Language support
Introduction to language support