Log Messages E-mail Notifications

The audit and debug logging facility allows you to maintain a record of activity through an App Server by storing various messages which provide information about what's been happening.

The e-mail notification facility allows you to receive e-mails alerting you when selected messages are written to the Digitise Apps standard audit log. You can configure the notification settings and then start and stop the notifications as required.

E-mails are sent using SMTP and your e-mail server must, therefore, be configured to use SMTP. You will need to enter details of the server and any credentials required to access the server. You will need to obtain the required information from your e-mail server administrator.

 

To configure e-mail notifications:

Within App Manager choose the Server Category button in the lower panel of the left-hand pane.

Click on the E-mail link under the Utilities section at the bottom of the right-hand pane.

The E-mail Notifications utility will load:

The Enable field allows you to turn e-mail notification on and off. Select Yes to turn e-mail notification on or No to turn it off. This allows you to configure e-mail notification and only use it when you need it, if you don't want e-mails to be sent all the time.

The Mail Server (SMTP) section allows you to configure the SMTP server to be used to send out your e-mails.

Enter the DNS name, IP Address or equivalent (such as an external access alias name) of the SMTP server in the Server field. The name you enter may need to be a fully qualified name, depending upon your network.

Then enter the required port number in the Port field.

Below this you need to enter valid user credentials, i.e. a Username and Password, which Digitise Apps can use to access your specified server.

If you do not know the values you need to enter in this section, contact your e-mail administrator for assistance.

In the Message section you can specify the recipient(s) of the e-mail and a subject line.

Enter the e-mail address(es) to which the e-mails should be sent in the Send To field and you can also 'cc' people if required by entering additional e-mail addresses in the CC field. You can enter more than one e-mail address in either field by separating the individual addresses with a semicolon, ';', up to a maximum of 3999 characters in either field.

The Sender Name field allows you to specify a string which will be included in the e-mail to identify the sender of the e-mails. The string entered here must take the form of an e-mail address and must not contain any spaces. Maximum 511 characters.

The Subject field allows you to specify the subject line to be used for the e-mails, up to a maximum of 511 characters. The subject can include various pieces of information which will be entered by the system at runtime. These are specified in the subject line by using placeholders which will be replaced with the live information when the e-mail is created. The following placeholders are available:

 

Once you have completed the Mail Server (SMTP) and Message sections you can check that you have entered the correct details using the SendTestMessage button.

Clicking this button will attempt to send a test message to your specified e-mail address via the specified SMTP server. A message will be displayed informing you whether the e-mail was sent successfully or not.

 

Once you have been able to successfully send a test message, you can go on to specify the rules which determine when an e-mail will be sent out. You do this in the Filter section at the bottom of the dialog box.

The Mode option allows you to choose whether you want to generate individual e-mails for each audit message matching your alert criteria or whether to bundle up messages which occur within a short space of time and send them together in a single e-mail. Selecting Send each notification in an individual e-mail will send a separate e-mail for each audit message which matches your notification criteria. Selecting Collate notifications into a single e-mail message will store all audit messages which occur in quick succession and include them all in a single e-mail message. This option can reduce the number of e-mail messages you receive when multiple audit message notifications are triggered in a short space of time.

You can now specify the rules which will determine which log messages you want to be notified about.

To specify a rule, click on the Add button.

The New Rule dialog box will be displayed:

Enter a name to identify this rule in the Name field.

Next, check the value in the Enabled field. This field allows you to configure a rule and then turn it on and off as required. Select Yes to use this rule or No to turn it off.

Below the Enabled field is a drop-down which allows you to specify whether the Audit Log messages identified by this rule should be included or excluded from the e-mail notification. For example, you could set up a generic rule to notify you when users use a particular app as a way of checking that all users update to the latest version but then configure a second rule to prevent sending an e-mail when a developer uses the app as this isn't relevant to your needs. In the first rule you would set logged messages to be Included in the e-mail notification but in the second rule you would set them to be Excluded.

The Criteria section allows you to define the rule.

In the Audit Type field, you need to specify whether you want to monitor Server messages or Application/Device/User messages. Server messages are those which appear under the Server category in App Manager and Application/Device/User messages appear under the Application, Device and User categories.

Below this you can select which types of Audit Log messages you want to monitor for this rule. You can select to monitor one or more of Information, Error or Debug messages. Select the required check boxes to indicate which messages you want to include.

The Application, User and Device fields then allow you to specify whether you want to monitor a specific app/user/device for this rule. Each field allows you to restrict the scope of the rule, so for example if a particular user is having a problem with a particular app, you could specify an e-mail notification to alert you when that user gets a certain error with that specific app. If you're not specifying a specific value in any of these fields, select the All option.

Finally, the Content field allows you to request e-mail notification when a specific string is found within any Audit messages which matches the other criteria specified in the previous fields. You can search for more than one string by entering each string on a different line within the edit box. For example, you could enter a specific error message that you want to be notified about, or check when users upgrade to a newer version of an app. Maximum 3999 characters.

If you leave this field empty all messages will trigger an e-mail notification, providing that they also match the other criteria specified.

When you have finished, choose the OK button to add your new rule to the list of rules or Cancel to abandon your changes.

The New Rule dialog box will disappear and you will return to the E-mail Notifications dialog. If you entered a new rule, your rule will be added to the list in the Rules list.

 

To edit an existing rule, select the rule in the Rules list and then choose the Edit button to the right of the list. This will display the Edit Rule dialog box displaying the current criteria for your selected rule. This dialog box contains the same options as the New Rule dialog described above and allows you to change any of the rule's criteria and enable/disable this rule.

You can delete a rule from the list by selecting it and then choosing the Remove button to the right of the list.

 

When you have finished specifying your e-mail notifications, click on the OK button to save any changes or Cancel to discard them. Note that the cancel button only applies to changes made to options within this dialog box. Changes made to individual rules and the contents of the rules list are not affected by this Cancel button.