It doesn't happen very often, does it?
Sometimes we find ourselves in a meeting where the iPad refuses to work; besides the standard checks on the battery and the Wi-Fi coverage, what can we do? Misbehaving reports can be due to many different reasons. Most of the time, if nothing was changed the night before, it could be a network issue or just a wrong answer to a prompt. If—beyond any reasonable attempt—the report refuses to deliver its payload, it's time to pick up the phone and dial IT support.
In the unlikely event of an IT problem, be prepared to give the following data:
- Make and model (version of operating system if applicable) of the mobile device: the MicroStrategy clients vary a lot from one another, and it's useful to know beforehand which tablet/smartphone you are using
- IP address of the device (if known) to detect network issues
- Name of the Intelligence Server, project, and report you are trying to access and the answers selected in every prompt; so that the IT guy can repeat your exact steps to reproduce the problem
Mobile clients have a diagnostic log that can be accessed for troubleshooting purposes. Messages in the log page may help the IT guy diagnose the problem.
To simulate a malfunction, you may stop the virtual machine we've used through the course of the book; in this way, we artificially create a service outage. Open a report on the iPad and wait for it to time out with an error:
- Open the information menu and tap Parameters.
- In the Parameters page, select Advanced Settings.
- The last option in the Advanced Settings page is View Log, tap it.
- The almost incomprehensible messages here are bad things that happened behind the scenes:
- Tap the icon at the bottom-right corner and a new e-mail message will be created with the log content. Send it to the IT guy. I know: had the problem been the Wi-Fi connection you wouldn't be able to send it, in that case, unfortunately, there is very little to do on the mobile side.
It's important to know where to look in case of error. The MicroStrategy Mobile app offers a detailed log in the Advanced Settings page that can help troubleshoot less-than-optimal performance.
The logging level can be set on the same page: you, or the IT support, may select from Warning, Errors, Messages, or All.
- The Creating virtual attributes with consolidations recipe in Chapter 11, Consolidations, Custom Groups, and Transformations