Understand Pega Alert Logs in detail
This is to inform you that the video above was recorded Live Class, understanding Pega Alert logs, conducted on 2nd of May as part of free course “Concepts of Pega”.
What are Pega Alert Logs?
Whenever during the execution of rules, Pega identifies a performance-related issue, Pega logs it as an event in a Text file known as Pega Alert Log.
How to Access Pega Alert Logs?
How to maintain and access the log depends upon, what tool the project administration team decided to use. But it s can be accessed using multiple ways. Some of these are:
Access within Pega Platform
- Go to Top Menu Configure > System > Operations > Logs
- Click on Log to view logs
- Click of Text to download logs as text file
- Click Zip to download logs as Zip file
- Go to Developer toolbar in footer
- Click on My Issues
When you download the log file, you can use below tools to read it
- Pega Log Analyser
- Microsoft Excel or similar tool
Access Outside Pega Platform
- AES – Autonomic Event Services
- PDC – Predictive Diagnostic Cloud
Parsing Pega Alert log in Excel
Pega alert logs in form of excel file are difficult to read so tools like Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice helps to simply the reading by parsing the logs into spreadsheet columns. Below are the steps for parsing the logs in excel but similar steps can be used in LibreOffice too.
- Open Microsoft Excel. Click on File, then click on open
- Click on Browse and Select Pega alert log file to parse
- A window will open. Click Delimited in the Original data type group.
- Click Next
- Select Other and Enter a single asterisk as the delimiter
- Click Next and Click finish
- Excel will parse your file
Alert Format
Each line contains multiple fields about the log event separated by *. Microsoft Excel helps to parse this file based on * delimited and places values in columns. So below are the list of field in an alert format and which column of excel contains it.
Note and Credits: Below table is copy and pasted from Pega Help 8.5 Documentation. Please refer https://community.pega.com/sites/default/files/help_v85/engine/alerts/alert-format-ref.htm for updates.
Column | Field | Description |
A | Time stamp | Date and time of the alert event in UTC format. |
B | Version | Displays the header version for the alert. For example, “8”. |
C | Message ID | Identifier of alert type, for example PEGA0011. |
D | KPI Value | Observed duration in milliseconds or count of value, known as the key performance indicator. |
E | KPI Threshold | Threshold value for this alert type, in milliseconds or count. |
F | ServerID | Node ID for the node that is the source of the alert event. |
I | Requestor ID | Session identifier; the first letter (A, B, H, or P) identifies the requestor type. A – requestor is being used by an application B – batch requestor used by agent processing H – requestor is being used by a user (HTTP interaction) P – requestor is used for portlet support |
J | User ID | Operator ID of requestor, or none. |
K | Work pool | Work pool that the requestor uses, or none. |
L | Rule application name version | Rule application and version used at the time of the alert. |
M | Encoded Ruleset | Hash code identifying the requestors ruleset list. |
N | Checkout Enabled | Y indicates that the activity in the Activity field is in a personal ruleset; that a developer has checked out the activity. |
O | Interaction number | For alerts from browser sessions, the interaction number (as it appears on the Performance tool display). |
P | Correlation ID | ID used to filter messages arriving on the request queue. By default, the requestor ID. |
Q | Sequence | Sequence number for this alert in the log; unique within this log. |
R | Thread | Internal name of the PRThread instance, or NA if this alert is not from a Thread. |
S | Pega Thread Name | The name of the Pega thread on which the alert happened. |
T | Logger | Java class that produced the alert instance. |
U | Stack | An indicator in the engine process that shows the processing state when the message occurred. (Not available for all alerts.) |
V | Last Input | For alerts from interactive requestors, a portion of the URL received in the most recent interaction. Typically the text Stream= or Activity= and the name of an activity or stream rule run by the URL. |
W | First Activity | For alerts from interactive requestors, the first activity or stream run by this requestor in the current interaction. (This activity or stream may or may not have caused the alert.) |
X | Last Step | If the First Activity field identifies an activity, this field identifies the step number last completed, when available. |
Y | Reserved | Reserved. |
Z | Reserved | Reserved. |
AA | Reserved | Reserved. |
AB | Reserved | Reserved. |
AC | Trace List | Colon-delimited string containing the most recent 50 operations of this requestor before the event. Each operation consists of two subfields in the format number:value:. |
AD | PAL data | For some Message ID types, a set of selected of Performance tool statistics at the time of the alert. A colon delimited string in the format propertyname:value:. Values are in milliseconds, bytes, or counts. |
AE | Primary page class | The class of the primary page at the time of the alert. |
AF | Primary page name | The name of the primary page at the time of the event. |
AG | Step page class | The class of the step page at the time of the event. |
AH | Step page name | The name of the step page at the time of the event. |
AI | Pega stack | The Pega stack at the time of the event. |
AJ | Parameter page | The clipboard page data found on the parameter page at the time of the event. |
AK | Line | A text description of the alert. |