MarkView - What diagnostic steps should I follow and what information should I gather when there is an issue with the MarkView email Notifications?

Applies To 

• ERP System: Oracle, SAP
• MarkView Version: 7.0 and later

Overview

The MarkView Process Mail Gateway is a Capture & Output component which processes inbound and outbound email messages related to the operation of MarkView and of items within the MarkView workflows. Outbound messages include system health alerts, notifications of items in users' inboxes and requests for users to approve invoices. Inbound messages include approval and rejection responses.

Troubleshooting Steps

If you encounter problems with MarkView email notifications, please perform the steps below.

Please note that the data returned by queries described in this article is also provided by the "User Email Notification Debug" utility provided in the Support Tools for Markview 10.1 and later.

- If a user is not receiving notifications of items in their Inbox, there are number of things to check:

• Check Email related preference values which determine how notifications are processed. In particular

  ENABLE_MVAP_CUSTOM - which determines whether custom code in the MVAP_CUSTOM package is called.

  MVAP_EMAIL_OPTION - which determines whether email notifications are generated "PER_DAY" when the DayTick event is processed or "PER_ITEM" when a workitem is retrieved in the user's Inbox

  MVT_TEST_EMAIL_ADDRESS - which, if set, overrides all user email addresses in the system. If users are receiving notifications but do not have relevant items in their inbox, it may be that the value of the MVT_TEST_EMAIL_ADDRESS preference is not set in a non-production environment. Alternatively, if the value of MVT_TEST_EMAIL_ADDRESS is set in a production environment, this would prevent users receiving notifications from that environment.

• Check whether workitems corresponding to notifications to the user are being generated by running the following query, entering the user name when prompted:

    select wi.workitem_instance_id,
           wi.queue_name,
           wi.ENQUEUED_TIMESTAMP
    from   sf_workitem_info wi,
           sf_workitem_property_values_v ppv
    where  wi.WORKITEM_INSTANCE_ID = ppv.WORKITEM_INSTANCE_ID
    and    wi.WORKFLOW_NAME = 'Outbound Email v5.0.1.2'
    and    ppv.PROPERTY_NAME = 'MailTo'
    and    upper(ppv.PROPERTY_VALUE) = upper(MVAP_UTILITY.GetUserEmailAddress(upper('&USER')))
    and    wi.ENQUEUED_TIMESTAMP > sysdate - 30
    and    wi.QUEUE_NAME <> 'Archive'
    order  by wi.ENQUEUED_TIMESTAMP desc;

This query will identify all workitems created in the Outbound Email workflow in the previous 30 days, where the value of the "MailTo" workitem property was the email address of the specified user.

If the workitems identified are in the Complete Mail queue, then they will have been processed by the Mail Gateway - unless they have been specifically routed to that queue.

If the workitems identified are in the New Mail queue, then the Mail Gateway has not been processing them and it is necessary to check the event log on the Mail Gateway server to understand why.

If Outbound Email workitems are being created and *are* moving to the "Complete Mail" queue, check that the mail messaging system is not routing emails to junk folders.

• If no Outbound Email workitems have been generated for the user, ensure that the user is valid- i.e. that the user is enabled and has a valid email address configured in their MarkView profile by running the following query, entering the user name when prompted:

      select username,
             first_name,
             last_name,
             email,
             enable_timestamp,
             disable_timestamp,
             auss_created_yn,
             print_queue,
             fax_queue,
             export_queue
        from mvum_user
       where username = upper('&USER');

• It is also important to check whether the user has items in their inbox by running the following query, entering the user name when prompted:

    select workitem_instance_id,
           queue_name,
           workflow_name,
           retrieved_timestamp
    from   sf_workitem_info
    where  upper(retrieving_user_id) = upper('&USER')
    and    queue_id in (select queue_id from mvt_web_inbox_queue where inbox_type = 'APINBOX');

Note that if the value of the MVAP_EMAIL_OPTION preference is PER_DAY then notifications will only be sent to a user if that user has items in their inbox at the time that the DayTick event is processed - so compare the value of "retrieved_timestamp" against the time when the DayTick is alerted and processed.

• If the value of the MVAP_EMAIL_OPTION preference is PER_ITEM then notifications should be generated whenever the user retrieves a workitem.
• If the value of MVAP_EMAIL_OPTION is PER_DAY and there are no items currently in the user's inbox, run the following query, entering the user name when prompted, to identify the last date when the user had items in their inbox overnight:

        select max(qv.dequeued_timestamp) - 1
        from   sf_workitem_queue_visit qv,
               sf_queue                q,
               sf_workitem_transition  wt
        where  qv.queue_id = q.queue_id
        and    upper(qv.retrieving_user_id) = upper('&USER')
        and    qv.out_transition_id = wt.transition_id
        and    q.queue_id in (select queue_id from mvt_web_inbox_queue where inbox_type = 'APINBOX')
        and    ((to_date(to_char(qv.dequeued_timestamp, 'DD-MM-YYYY'), 'DD-MM-YYYY')) >
               (to_date(to_char(qv.retrieved_timestamp, 'DD-MM-YYYY'), 'DD-MM-YYYY')));

If the value of MVAP_EMAIL_OPTION is PER_DAY and the user had items in their inbox overnight, but no outbound email workitems are being created, check whether the events which trigger the generation of notifications - usually the DayTick event - are being processed.

The following query will indicate whether there are any pending DayTick or HourTick events:

    select ea.event_type_id,
           et.event_name,
           count(*) event_count
    from   sf_event_alert ea,
           sf_event_type  et
    where  ea.event_type_id = et.event_type_id
    and    et.event_name in ('DayTick', 'HourTick')
    group by ea.event_type_id, et.event_name
    order by count(*) desc;

If events are not being processed, check whether the status of manager jobs using the Support Tools "Database Job Administration" utility. if a manager job has stopped, check the log file for that manager to identify which events were failing.

 

Logging

Events associated with the MarkView Mail Gateway are recorded in the 170 MarkView event log on the machine running Mail Gateway.

Logging is controlled by the preferences for each instance of the Mail Gateway.

To modify the logging settings, follow the steps below:

- On the Mail Gateway server, double-click on the "MV Mail Gateway - Configuration" icon.

- Select the required instance of Mail Gateway and click on "Preferences...".

- Click on the "Log" tab.

- Select the level of logging: "Errors", "Errors and Warnings" (the default option) or "Errors, Warnings, and Normal Messages".

- Click OK to confirm that selection and close the window.

- Restart the Mail Gateway service for that instance.
 

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Next Steps

If, having followed the steps in this article, you are still unable to identify the root cause of the problem, please log a MarkView support case providing the following:

1. If you are using the MarkView 10.1 Support Tools, provide the HTML output of the “User Email Notification Debug” utility.
   Otherwise, provide the outputs of the queries in this article in Excel format.
2. The HTML output from the MarkView Support Tools "MarkView Preferences" utility.
3. The HTML output from the MarkView Support Tools "Workitem History" utility for all relevant workitems.
4. The HTML output from the MarkView Support Tools "Database Job Administration" utility.
5. The 170 MarkView event log from the machine running Mail Gateway.