Monitoring and Troubleshooting Kafka Integrations

Overview

This page provides guidance on how system administrators can use the different types of log files that Appian produces to assess performance, analyze usage, troubleshoot issues, and audit activity related to Kafka connected systems and event consumers.

Monitoring performance and usage

Performance logs are written to the APPIAN_HOME/logs/perflogs directory. These logs are written as CSV files for observation and analysis using common spreadsheet tools. The information in them can be used to learn the broad spectrum of the actions performed by consumers and how long those actions take to complete.

Logs are accessible only by system administrators.

Apache Kafka connected system log

Changes to connected system objects are recorded in a comma-separated value (CSV) file, design_objects.csv, in the <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/audit directory. You can refer to this log file to learn when a Kafka connected system object was created, updated, or deleted, and which user took the action.

Column	Description
Timestamp	Date and time when the object was changed
User UUID	The UUID of the user who took the action
Username	The username of the user who took the action
Object UUID	The UUID of the affected object
Object Type	The type of the affected object
Action	The action taken on the object

Troubleshoot performance and usage

Error logs specific to event consumer objects are written to the APPIAN_HOME/logs/event_consumer directory. These logs are written as CSV files for observation and analysis using common spreadsheet tools.

Logs are accessible only by system administrators.

Event consumer system log

This log provides details when an error impacts an event consumer and causes Appian to stop the consumer from processing any more events.

The log data is written to a comma separated value (CSV) file (event_consumer_errors.csv) in the <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/event_consumer directory.

Column Name	Column Description
Timestamp	Date and time when an error occurred
Name	Name of the event consumer design object where the error occurred
MCDO UUID	UUID of the event consumer design object where the error occurred
Error Code	Appian code denoting the error
Error Message	Error message

Event consumer events log

This log captures the details of errors that impact individual events within an event consumer design object.

The log data is written to a comma separated value (CSV) file (event_consumer_events_errors.csv) in the <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/event_consumer directory.

Column Name	Column Description
Timestamp	Date and time the error occurred
Name	Name of the event consumer design object where the error occurred
UUID	UUID of the event consumer design object where the error occurred
Topic Name	Name of the topic being consumed
Offset	Offset within the partition from which the event was consumed
Partition	Partition number from which the event was consumed
Message Size	The size of the event in bytes
Error Code	Appian code denoting the error
Error Message	Error message

Email error alerts

When an event consumer encounters an error, Appian takes a few actions:

• The event consumer is stopped.
• Two email alerts are sent to the event consumer's administrators. One email tells you that the consumer has been stopped and the other provides information about the error and links to investigate further.

How email alerts work

Email alerts are sent when runtime errors or activation errors occur in an event consumer. The email includes:

• Event Consumer: Name of the event consumer where the error occurred.
• Error details: Appian error code and error message.
• Event Metadata (for individual event errors only): Topic name, partition number, and offset.
• Error Timestamp: Date and time when the error occurred, displayed in your timezone.
• A button to view the event consumer object in Appian Designer.
• A link to view system logs.

Email alerts are sent immediately when errors occur. If your team uses an incident management tool like PagerDuty or OpsGenie, you can use these emails to start an incident response.

Email alert permissions

To receive email error alerts for an event consumer, make sure:

• Outbound emails are turned on for the environment.
• You have Administrator permissions to the event consumer object in that environment.

To access the event consumer from the link in the email, you must have the Designer user role assigned, which gives access to Appian Designer.

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