TechTip: Configuring and Using the ArchestrA Worfklow Logger

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1 NOTE: This article and all content are provided on an "as is" basis without any warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. In no event shall Wonderware North be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortuous action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of information contained in this article. What do you do if your Wonderware software or your configured application is not working as planned? Perhaps the communication to the PLC is down, the read or write to the recipe database is not functioning, or possibly your workflow is being triggered but is finishing with errors. Figure 1

2 What is your next step? You may be familiar with the ArchestrA Logger that is contained within the System Management Console. This logger can be used as a diagnostic tool to gather more information and help track down what might be going wrong with your application. The ArchestrA Workflow software uses this logger for logging its information as it interfaces with Wonderware s System Platform. However, ArchestrA Workflow has an additional logger for its core set of services; this logger is called Skelta Logger Console, which can be accessed under the Start Menu and Skelta BPM.NET. Figure 2 You will now see a command line window and while this console is running, any actions that are being performed by the ArchestrA Workflow services, will write messages to this window. Figure 3

3 To assist in searching this window for specific messages that might contain errors and warnings; you can copy the contents of the window to the clipboard and past into WordPad or your favorite word processing program. To accomplish this task, single click the icon in the top left corner of the window, scroll down to Edit and select Select All. Repeat these steps but this time select Copy. Now the contents are within the Windows Clipboard and available to copy to any program for further analysis. Figure 4 It is possible to configure this logger console to log more or less messages. This can be accomplished through the Skelta Farm Configuration Wizard which can be access via the Start Menu under Skelta BMP.NET. Figure 5

4 Figure 6 On the initial step of this wizard, click Next and the Skelta Farm settings window appears. Select the Service Settings and click Next and the Services/Global Settings appears. Figure 7 Figure 8

5 In the Services/Global Settings window, select the gears icon next to the Global Settings on the bottom of the window and the Global Setting window will appear and then select Log/Transaction tab. Figure 9 In this window, configure the settings for logger based on the following, when complete, click OK. The services will then restart and your new messages will then be available to be logged. The following are descriptions of the Debug Levels: Level 1: Shows minimal information in the Skelta Logger Console, giving only information on the start and end of the workflow. Error messages are also shown in this mode. Skelta recommends this Debug Level on production environment. Level 2: Shows detailed information of what is happening in the background. It will show all the messages logged from the actions. Level 3: Shows only messages indicating whether the Activity is executed. Persist Exception in database and Persist Warning in database: When the workflow is triggered or when the user submits the activity, or when the workflow engine sends an alert about an activity, the action may fail and thus also the workflow. It becomes necessary for the users to understand the main cause for the failure of the workflow so that they can modify/handle it and thus improve the process life cycle. To help the users to trace the exact exception message, all the exceptions and warnings can be persisted in the database. So, the users can now see all the exceptions occurred for that workflow by selecting the View Exceptions from the workflow item context menu. This pops up a window which lists all the exceptions occurred for that particular workflow.