Application logging options

Users with administrator privileges for the GRANTA MI system can view and change MI:Viewer logging options: in the MI:Viewer toolbar, click on Admin and then click the Logging tab.

Application Activity Summary logs

Application Activity reporting information can help you to better understand your system users and their needs.

User activity information for all GRANTA MI applications – which applications and databases were used, by whom, and when – is logged by the MI system. A daily summary of user activity is saved as a CSV format log file that can be downloaded from the Download MI Application Activity Summary panel on the MI:Viewer Admin>Logging tab.

• For a file that includes a summary of usage for the current month and the previous two months, select Last 3 months then click Download.
• For information on usage over specific time period, select the start and end months, then click Download.

This report can be used to plot graphs and create tables in Excel to visualize application usage, identify trends, and create key performance indicators for management reports.

Dates in the in the Application Activity Report are recorded in ISO format, yyyy-MM-dd, for example:

This ensures that, when the file is opened in Microsoft Excel, the date field will be interpreted correctly, regardless of your locale, allowing the data to be used in tables and graphs more easily.

Note that Activity Report data generated in older versions of GRANTA MI (before version 10 Update 3) used a date format based on the server's date and time setting.

Changing the logging level in MIViewer.log

MI:Viewer writes log files of its activities. The default location of these files is App_Data\logs in the MI:Viewer installation folder, typically: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mi\App_Data\logs.

A number of different application log files may be generated:

• MIViewer.log – application error, warning, information, and debug messages.
• Sessions.log – user session information, showing who has logged into MI:Viewer.
• RoundTripInfo.log – round-trip information.

The logs are set to roll over on a daily basis. The log files from the previous day have their date appended, for example, MIViewer.2015-05-18.log.

Logging level

The logging level determines the amount of information that is logged in the MI:Viewer.log file. The higher the logging level, the more information is written to the log file. You can change the logging level permanently or just for the current MI:Viewer session from the Logging Level panel on the Logging tab.

The levels are named after the severity of events they are used to track, and go from logging only the highest severity events (level= ERROR) to logging all events (level = DEBUG):

• ERROR – Log only runtime errors or unexpected conditions, where software has not been able to perform some function.
• WARN – In addition to errors, also log information about less serious problems that did not result in an unrecoverable error.
• INFO – In addition to errors and warnings, also log information relevant to the general running and management of your system, where things are working as expected. This is the default logging level for MI:Viewer.
• DEBUG – This is the most verbose logging level, including detailed information about all event types that may diagnostically helpful to developers, IT, and system administrators.

To change the logging level:

1. In the MI:Viewer toolbar, click on Admin.
2. Click the Logging tab.
3. Select the required level from the Logging level list.
   • To log all events, select ALL (this includes Debug, Info, Warning, Error, and Trace).
   • To turn off event logging (no events will be logged in MI:Viewer.log), select OFF.
4. By default, any changes to the logging level made on the Logging tab will remain in effect until the MI:Viewer application restarts. To save the selected level as the new MI:Viewer application default, select Persist this change to the config file.
5. Click Save.

The default logging level is specified in the MI:Viewer configuration file log4net.config, typically located here:

C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mi\App_Data\log4net.config

Additional MI:Viewer logging options

Round-trip logging

When enabled, round-trip information (URL, user, and time taken) for requests is written to RoundTripInfo.log. This allows you to monitor the availability and performance of MI:Viewer processes. Round-trip logging is disabled by default as it degrades application performance and can result in very large log files. For that reason, we recommend enabling round-trip logging only if instructed to do so by Granta Support.

Show page load statistics

When enabled, you can view data on page load and round trip times in MI:Viewer:

• Data for the tree view are shown in a Debug tab on the left of the application window
• Data for the page shown in the main pane are shown at the bottom of the page.

 Click to view an example

Downloading MI:Viewer event log files

You can download MI:Viewer application event  log files containing application error, warning, information, and debug messages, from the Download log files panel.  Log files are downloaded in a zip file.

• To download a single log file, select it from the list under Single Log File and click Download Log File. By default, all log files from the last 7 days are listed here. To see more or fewer log files in the list, enter the number of days in the Time span box and click Apply filter.
• To download all log files from a specified time period, choose the start and end dates and then click Download All Log Files. The files will be downloaded as a single zip file.

Downloading MI:Server logs

You can download MI:Server log files from the Download MI:Server logs panel.  Downloaded files are saved in a zip file that includes:

• Daily MI:Server application logs that include startup and shutdown information, errors, warning messages, and additional information.
• Notifications logs, containing information on MI:Server notifications service events.
• Data Updater logs.