Server Activity Monitor

M-Files Admin contains a tool called Server Activity Monitor for observing the various events taking place on your M-Files Server computer. The tool enables you to easily identify possible issues related to operations taking place on the server.

Note: The activity monitor records a limited number of events. This means that once the record is full, every time a new event is recorded, the oldest event is removed from the list.

This topic describes the various views included in the monitoring tool, but let's first see how to access Server Activity Monitor in M-Files Admin.

To open the server monitoring tool:

Open M-Files Admin.
Expand the server connection node.
Select Server Activity Monitor.

As a result, you should see the activity monitor on the right side window of M-Files Admin.

Note: The views are not updated in real time. You can use the Refresh and Reset commands on the task pane to update and clear the views. The activity monitor is always on, so you do not need to separately activate it.

Server Activity Monitor in M-Files Admin.

Tip: You can sort the information by any numerical column in any of the views by clicking the column heading of you choice.

Tip: You can easily copy any of the server activity listings shown by selecting and copying a listing and pasting the selection into, say, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word. If you paste the selection into a Microsoft Excel worksheet, the copied listing is separated into multiple cells, preserving the original row and column format.

Task pane commands

The commands on the task pane allow you to perform various operations in Server Activity Monitor:

Refresh updates the server activity data with up-to-date information.
Reset removes all the existing server activity data and restarts the monitoring.
Show System Sessions / Hide System Sessions shows or hides active system sessions and operations. If system sessions are hidden, only user activity is shown.
Export Server Activity... allows you to export the current server activity data to a JSON file.
Import Server Activity... allows you to import and view server activity data previously exported to a JSON file.

Active sessions on server

This view lists all the active user and system sessions by vault connection. If the connection is listed as (server), the connection is not to any of the vaults, but to the server itself.

Most active sessions

This view lists the total number (Count) and duration of operations (Total duration) by user, the description of the operation (Operation), the average duration per operation (Average), and the vault connection (Vault).

The Total row shows the total duration and number of operations for the entire period server activity has been monitored, and the number of operation calls made per second during the monitoring period.

Note: This view lists only thirty operations at a time, whereas the Total row displays the total number and duration of operations for the entire period of time server activity has been monitored. Therefore the calculated total number and duration of the operations visible in the view may not be equal to the figures shown in the Total row.

Objects modified

This view displays the number of object modifications by user and vault.

The types of modification listed in this view are:

object creation
object modification
object deletion

The Total row shows the total number of object modifications for the monitoring period and the average number of object modifications made per second.

Note: This view lists only thirty operations at a time, whereas the Total row displays the total number of operations for the entire period of time server activity has been monitored. Therefore the calculated total number of the operations visible in the view may not be equal to the figures shown in the Total row.

Views and searches

This section lists the views accessed and searches initiated by the user. It displays the total duration, the number of uses, and the average duration per use of a single view (such as Recently Accessed by Me) or a search. Each row displays the user who accessed the view or performed the search, as well as the vault in which the operation was performed.

The Total row shows the total duration it has taken to open views and perform searches during the monitoring period. It also displays the total number of searches performed and views opened, and the average number of such operations made per second.

Background processes

The Background processes view lists activities automatically executed by M-Files Server, such as scheduled maintenance tasks and processing of automatic state transitions. In addition to the name of the process, the view displays the affected vault, as well as the duration, the last start time, and – for periodic events – the next start time of the process.