Stopped sending info

[STEVEG]

Has anyone else had their information stopped being sent to PTC's site?  The last date entries the site shows is from July 10.

I reinstalled M150 on an extra computer yesterday so I am waiting to see if will automatically send later today.

It might just be a coincidence that our IT department took the network down the evening of the 10th for maintenance and "upgrades".

[Tmetcalf]

Good day Steve,

I will look into things and either I or someone from the Performance Advisor team will report back.

Best,

Toby

[STEVEG]

Toby, where you able to find anything?

[kskerrett]

Hi Steve-

I don't know of any problems of data being sent up. Are files being collected in the Sent File Location?

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\PTC\QualityAgent:

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS198029

If you'd like, you can also open a case and we can have someone take a look....

[STEVEG]

Hi Kevin.

When I started using PA it wasn't sending the info on one of our computers.  I opened a call for that.  The first thing they suggested was to put the port number so that it's allowed through the firewall.  Well, there is no way our IT manager will do that.  They can be pretty strict here.  Heck, we can't even play any videos from the internet.

Anyway...I did some testing and I uninstalled M150 and reinstalled it.  The first time I installed it on this machine was through the silent install process.  The other computers I installed it on for testing was manually.  Once I installed it manually on this machine it started sending the data.

Ok, great.  Everything was working fine.  Then all of a sudden none of the computers I installed it on was sending data after July 10.

Yesterday I reinstalled M150 on this one computer and ran Creo.  I wanted to wait and see if it will send the info today.  But it is not.  There is no SentFiles directory in that location.  There are the Outbox and the UnprocessedFiles directories.

I am going to try and uninstall it and install it again.  This time I'll install it manually again and will see what happens tomorrow.

But as I originally mentioned, I don't know if it was a coincidence that it stopped working after the upgrades or not.  If this doesn't work tomorrow then I will either put in a call or try and talk to our IT person.  But I'm not looking forward to that.  He can be...ahem...interesting to work with.

[STEVEG]

As a reference to what Jim said in this posting...

---

I still can't get it to send but this is what I did.

I put the session_log_mechanism in my .sup file and the quality_agent_path in my own config.pro file and it still is not sending the information.  And the registry entry QualityAgentOptIn is set to 1.

But what's odd is that the Sent Files directory is not even created.

So I am leaning more and more toward our IT dept as to why it's not sending.

[DanielC.Nowitz]

hi Steve,

If you have not made any chances to your installation, i would also suspect IT changes could be the culprit. As Kevin suggested, it would probably be a good idea to log a case with Technical Support at this point. They can work with you and try to sort this out as quickly as possible.

- Dan

[STEVEG]

Well, it might be fixed in Creo 2 M170 and Creo 3 M050.

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS208195

It might still be our site but I'm going to try this first.

[STEVEG]

I started Creo 2 M170 on Friday so that when I ran it today I would know whether the information was sent or not.  It did.  So it might not have been our IT dept after all.

However, and this is a big however, all the data in the Performance Advisor dashboard prior to today was deleted.  I already put in a call about it.

Can someone else check their dashboard to see if it's just me or everyone?

[TomU]

All my data is still visible.

[STEVEG]

Then it's just me.  Thank you Tom.

[STEVEG]

I found out that the reason my older data doesn't show in the Dashboard is because it only shows the last 10 days worth of data...with one exception.

The last piece of data shown on the Dashboard was from July 10.  Obviously that is more than 10 days old.  But because there was no data since July 10 it shows that data.  I installed M170 on Friday.  When I got into work yesterday and looked at the Dashboard the data was there.  After looking at the Dashboard I ran M170 and it sent the data.  Since there is data that is newer than the last 10 days it removed the older data.  Then I can pick on the link of users and I can change the date of the table.

I asked the tech if the number of days it shows in the Dashboard can be changed but it cannot.  At least not now.  He was going to bring it up I can also create an idea for the Dashboard to be able to change that on the main page.

However, I still don't know for sure why the data stopped sending for us with M150.  It still might be our IT dept that caused the problem since it works with M170.  Maybe M150 & M160 are more susceptible to network connectivity issues?

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS72479

[STEVEG]

I installed M170 on two other users since Monday and all three user's information is sending to the Performance Advisor Dashboard.

But why M150 all of a sudden stopped sending is beyond me.  I can understand it being fixed in M170 and leave it at that IF M150 never worked in the first place.  But it did.  I even installed M160 on one user before the time it stopped sending.  It's probably a combination of M150/M160 working under some configurations and something our IT department did.

[STEVEG]

Toby, were you able to find anything out?

I still don't know why it would have stopped.  Did the way it sent information change between M150/M160 and M170?

[Marco_Tosin]

Hi Steve,

I discovered some strange behavior with Creo Agent and Diagnostic Tools, but it tooks a lot of time for me to explain.

As soon as I have more time I'll explain to you.

[kskerrett]

Steve-

There was some backend work that may have prevented some data from showing up. I think everything should be processing now. See if anything gets displayed this week, and if it still isn't showing open up a support case.

[STEVEG]

Kevin,

I have several people that have M150 and one with M160 and none of them is having their info sent.  But anyone of my users with M170 does have the info sent.

[Marco_Tosin]

OK Steve,

let me explain what I discovered in the past two weeks.

We set Performance Advisor only with local installation of Creo Agent and centralized installation of Creo, with Diagnostic Tool path set on config.pro and sending date set daily.

No registry keys modified.

We move from Creo 2 M140 to Creo 2 M160 on the evening of July 31 (our last working day before summer vacation, except for a few users who works until August 4).

Starting from that same afternoon, I saw data on PA dashboard and they grew until August 4.

Data were still visible until we came back on the afternoon of August 24 (exactly 20 days from last working day or from when last data was sent).

That same day all data disappeared and nothing was sent until next Monday on August 31 (exactly one week), even when I tried to send them manually.

Suddenly on August 31 afternoon, data was again sent automatically to PTC.

I think that something on Creo Agent was set to behave in that way or maybe this is a bug.

In some workstation, even if I tried to send data with Diagnostic Tool, they moved to Outbox folder, but nothing else happened, so I try some workaround and copied that data to my machine and then, with DT, I successfully send them to PTC.

Looking at data on the dashboard I discovered some other little bugs.

If you look at user table, session start and end time are not the same written in xml files sent to PTC, but it is postponed of three hours.

I think this is due to three hours set by PTC before data received from users are shown on dashboard.

But if you look at sessions table, start and end time are written 9 hours later.

I hope this comment could help you in troubleshooting your problem.

[STEVEG]

Thank you Marco.  But I think I know why you were not getting the information.

If you look in the upper-left of the Dashboard there is a From and To.  This is the dates the information shows from.

So when you got back there wasn't anything showing because the time-frame it was reporting from didn't have any data.  Nobody was at work so no data was sent.

Regarding the time difference, I have the same problem.  I compared the time it shows in the Performance Advisor to the time in the ptclmgrd.log and they are exactly 8 hours.  I have a call in to PTC about this problem.  They created an SPR and they are evaluating it.

[Marco_Tosin]

Steve,

I've already seen what you have described.

What I mean is that not only data were not visible, but they were non sent for an entire week from the client to PTC server, even if I tried to do it manually.

It seems that after refreshing data, Creo Agent stopped working.

[Marco_Tosin]

I think this is the article based on your call: https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?source=subscription&n=CS216388

[STEVEG]

It certainly looks like it.  Thank you for the link.

[Marco_Tosin]

Wow!

Today is the day I've been waiting for.

Two days ago a user had a crash of Creo.

Now in the recommendations section I found the first from PTC with a solution.

See attached pictures and also link to TS's article

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS205859

[STEVEG]

That IS great news!

I just wish it would show something for me.  I still have zeros for my users.

[Marco_Tosin]

This is not the first crash.

I think that it's the first time PTC has a solution to give.

[STEVEG]

My only guess as to why it stopped sending is as follows.

Build M150 and M160 was originally able to send the information.

Out IT dept did some changes in July and the info stopped being sent.

I installed M170 on a few computers and it started sending again but M150 and M160 still does not.

So my conclusion is that builds M150 & M160 sends the info only under certain situations.  PTC must have made it more versatile in build M170.

[Marco_Tosin]

We are still on M160.

The strange thing is that not all session are send to PTC or, in other words, some sent sessions are not registered on PA site.

You could check this issue comparing file in Sentfiles folder and sessions on the dashbord.

Anyway, thanks to PA I have correct some odd behavior of some users and, at the moment (crossing my fingers), unexpected exits are decreasing while MTTX are growing.

[STEVEG]

That is fantastic to hear.  But you may want to test M170.  It has sent all the sessions for us.

What were some of your corrections?  There still doesn't show any recommendations in our Perf Advisor Dashboard.  Is that where you got the fixes?

[Marco_Tosin]

At the moment the only recommendation I've got is about this article https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS205859

I have discovered other issues searching for unexpected exits, then asking users about what happened and trying to resolve this issues with the help of some key users, because I'm not a Creo user.

[Marco_Tosin]

Steve,

I found another reason behind stopped sending info.

We have two major categories of Creo users.

Some who have internet access, while others don't have it.

To send data to PTC for the second group we created a rule on the firewall based on IP address of PA site.

Around mid-september PTC changed IP address and then data for this group of users were no more sent (I noticed this behavior this morning).

After changing IP address data was sent again.

I know rule could be based on domain name and not on IP address, but for some strange reason our firewall doesn't accept (only for PA site) this rule.