Error log

When something goes wrong unexpectedly, DocView Capture never shows a technical error page. The user sees a short message with an error reference, for example DV-261019-3C6Y8. The full details of the error go to the error log, where a site administrator can find them by that reference.

Errors in the DocView Workers are recorded in the same way, with their own reference.

What users see

The error page has a Copy button next to the reference and a support e-mail link. The link fills in the reference, the time and the page, so the user only has to describe what they were doing.

Site administrators also see the error message on the page, with a link that opens it in the error log.

Find an error from its reference

1. Go to Administration › Error log. You need the Site administration permission.
2. Type or paste the reference into Reference or text and press Filter.

The error opens straight away. If the error happened only a moment ago, wait a few seconds: errors are saved in the background.

What an error shows

• The message and the type of error.
• Time: local time and UTC.
• Source: the web app or a DocView Worker, the computer it ran on, and the DocView Capture version.
• Page: the address the user was on, and whether they were opening it or saving.
• User: who was signed in.
• Batch: the batch being processed, for DocView Worker errors. Click it to open the batch.
• Trace id: matches the entry in the server's log files.
• Technical details: the full error with the stack trace. Copy copies it together with the reference, ready for a support ticket.
• Other times this happened: other errors of the same kind (see below).

Errors of the same kind

DocView Capture recognises errors of the same kind even when their numbers and identifiers differ. Two errors are the same kind when they have the same type of error, come from the same place in the program, and have the same message apart from those numbers and identifiers.

• The Times column shows how often each kind happened in the period shown.
• Tick One per kind to see each kind once, with its most recent occurrence. This gives you a short list of distinct problems instead of a long list of repeats.

Follow an error up

Each error has a status:

On the error, choose the status and add a note, such as the cause, a ticket number or the fix, then click Save. If the error happened more than once, Set the status on all of this kind changes every occurrence at once.

Status changes are recorded in the audit log as ErrorFollowedUp.

Filter and export

Filter by text (the message, type of error, page, user or reference), status, source (Web or Worker) and date. Without a date, the last 30 days are shown. The list shows 50 errors to a page, with page numbers and a choice of 25, 50, 100 or 200 a page below it. Export saves the whole filtered list (up to 10,000 errors) to Excel or CSV.

Try it

Test the error page at the top of the error log raises a harmless test error. You see exactly what users see, and the error appears in the log. Use it to check the error page after an update.

How long errors are kept

Error log retention (days) in Administration › Settings sets how long errors are kept. The default is 180 days. 0 keeps everything. The nightly retention job deletes older errors. See Archive and retention.

Good to know

• An error that happens while the database itself cannot be reached is not in the error log. It is still in the server's log files, under the same reference.
• Messages that tell the user what to correct, such as "This field is required", are not errors and are not logged here.

Related

• Audit log
• DocView Workers
• Archive and retention