Type
Tracking item
Available from
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Report item is to track and submit application data that you can use to analyze and evaluate application performance in the run-time environment. You can use the Report item to:
- Define the type of data the item is reporting.
- Declare the severity of alarm that is associated with each item.
- Give the reason the item is being reported.
- Record the value of variables or variable fields at that point in the application.
Behavior
During simulation or run time, the Report item takes the value of the various fields and properties and writes these values to a log file. The application locates this log file in the ProjectName/data/log directory, where ProjectName represents the name of the speech application project.
To view the log file contents after application simulation in Dialog Designer, locate the appropriate log file in this directory and double-click it.
Note:
If you are using an Avaya Voice Portal system, you can view an automatically
generated Application Report of this log data. See "Application Report" in your
Voice Portal documentation.
The name of the log file for the current day is always report.log. Each time you
run a simulation, Dialog Designer appends the log data to the end of this file. After
the end of each day on which data has been written to the log file, Dialog
Designer renames the log file to: report.log.yyyy-mm-dd, where yyyy-mm-dd
represents the date on which the log file was compiled.
Report log data is written using log4j logging technology. Because this is new technology and available information constantly changes, for more information about log4j technology, Avaya recommends that you perform an Internet search with the search term "log4j".
Dialog Designer applications are set at deployment whether they are to operate in an Avaya Interactive Response (IR) or an Avaya Voice Portal environment.
- If in an IR environment, the Report item data is written to a log file on the application server. This makes it easier to use standard reporting or database software to retrieve the information for reports which you can analyze more easily.
- If in a Voice Portal environment, the Report item data is written to an SQL database on the Voice Portal Management System (VPMS) server. The Voice Portal Management System administration tool provides an option to generate and view an Application Report that uses this data. See "Application Report" in your Voice Portal documentation library.
To view the log file contents in a run-time environment, perform one of the following actions:
- For IR systems, locate the appropriate log file on the application server, and view it with your text viewer or word processor of choice.
- To locate the file, start with the directory in which you have the Tomcat server software installed. From there, use the following path to the log file:
- TomcatHome/webapps/applicationName/data/log
- where TomcatHome is the directory in which you installed the Tomcat software and applicationName is the name of your application.
- For Voice Portal systems, from the main menu, select Reports > Application. For more information about this report tool, see "Application Report" in your Voice Portal documentation library.
Because the Report item is considered primarily a reporting tool for analysis and evaluation of applications, there is no need enable or disable it. When you use it in an application, it is always enabled.
Properties
- Type - Select the type you want to assign to this Report item.
- Dialog Designer writes the type you select to the log file as part of the report data. This makes it possible to search the log file or database for specific types with which to perform an analysis.
- For example, If you want to analyze the success rate of a car rental application in getting customers to reserve a rental car over the telephone. You can place a Report item at the start of the actual transaction part of the call flow and select the type as Start.
- Then, at the end of the rental transaction, when the customer has verified and approved the reservation, you can place another Report item and select End for the type.
- Later, after the application has been in service for some time, you can retrieve the report data and compile it into a report that compares the number of transactions that were started versus the number of transactions that were successfully completed.
Note:
For this example to work, you must use the same name in the Name field for both
the Start Report item and the End Report item.
- The following table lists and describes the types available.
|
Type
|
Use this alarm descriptor to indicate:
|
|---|
Start
| The beginning of a section of the call flow on which you want to report data.
To be used effectively, the Name field for this Report item must exactly match the Name field of a Report item of type End that comes later in the call flow.
|
End
| The end of a section of the call flow on which you want to report data.
To be used effectively, the Name field for this Report item must exactly match the Name field of a Report item of type Start that occurs earlier in the call flow.
|
Cancel
| A cancellation of an Report item of type Start that occurs earlier in the call flow.
To be used effectively, the Name field for this Report item must exactly match the Name field of a Report item of type Start that precedes it in the call flow.
|
Cancel All
| A cancellation of all Report items of type Start that occur earlier in the call flow.
|
In Progress
| Report data on a type already in progress. In other words, use this type somewhere between a Start type and an End type to collect data in the interim.
|
- Level - Select the level of alarm you want to generate with this Report item.
- Dialog Designer writes the alarm level you select to the log file as part of the report data. This makes it possible to search the log file for specific problems based on the alarm level of the report entry. It also makes it possible to use other software to generate alarms on the system by reading and responding to the contents of the report.log file.
In Avaya IR systems, to do this, you must write or acquire an application to
monitor the log file and then generate a system alarm when certain key words are
encountered. In Avaya Voice Portal systems, to do this you must write or acquire
a similar application to monitor the database to which the data is being written.
- The following table lists the alarm levels for Report items in the report.log file, and provides a brief description of what each level means.
|
Alarm Level
|
Description
|
|---|
Fatal
| A situation in which the application would crash.
|
Error
| A situation that would cause the application to generate an error.
|
Warning
| A situation that would cause the application to generate a warning.
|
Info
| A situation that would cause the application to generate an informational message.
|
On Voice Portal systems, the Application Report displays this setting for entries in
the Level column.
- Activity Name - Enter in this field the name you want to use to identify the Report item entry in the report.log file. For example, if you are using the Report item to record the data related to a customer transaction to reserve a rental car, you might name this Report item RentalTrans.
On Voice Portal systems, the Application Report displays this setting for entries in
the Activity column.
- Message - Enter in this field text describing what the purpose of this Report item is at this point in the call flow.
- For example, if you are using the Report item at the beginning of a car rental transaction section of the code, you might have a Type of Start, a Name of RentalTrans, and in this field you might then enter: Customer starts the reservation transaction.
- The report item writes this string to the log file or database exactly as you enter it here.
On Voice Portal systems, the Application Report displays this setting for entries in
the Message column.
- Variable - Select the variable whose value you want to write as an entry in the log file or database.
- If this variable is a complex variable, you must also select a Variable Field.
On Voice Portal systems, the Application Report does not display this setting, but
the value of this variable can be viewed in the Message Details page for the
Application Report message. For more details on Application Report, see
"Reports" chapter of Administering Voice Portal guide and "VPMS web page
reference" chapter of Voice Portal web interface page reference guide in the
Voice Portal documentation library.
- Variable Field - If the Variable you selected is a complex variable, select the variable whose value you want to write as an entry in the log file or database.
On Voice Portal systems, the Application Report does not display this setting, but
the value of this variable can be viewed in the Message Details page for the
Application Report message. See "Application Report" in the Voice Portal
documentation library.
Tip: