The Document Generation Service represents the heart of DocumentsCorePack (DCP). Every document that is generated starts with a request to your service, which will create the document, convert it to your desired format and then store it back into your environment. Since this is a very crucial task, we provide detailed information on your service with DCP service logs & document statistics via the DCP config.
This Online Service Configuration window can be opened by logging into your mscrm-addons account and navigating to My Account Overview > Manage Services.
When you select a service, and overview of that service will open, as seen below.
On the Overview page, you can view three pie charts that give insights for the current month and year. They show the break down of created multi-part documents, SharePoint locations, and other actions that count toward the documents included per month, as further described here.
The following logs are available for you to view and can be found in the navigation side-bar:
- Service Logs: Insights on the service health
- Document Statistics: Insights into the performance of your documents
- Data Usage Chart: Number of documents generated/month
1. Service Logs
The Service Logs provide valuable insights into service health, such as Status, Error details, Activity, etc. This information is mainly used by our support team to gain information about the service, like what it is doing or has been doing, and if/why it was stopped or started.
Please note: Service logs are only kept for an interval of about 14 days.
2. Document Statistics
The Document Statistics contain valuable information on every document generated with the most important entries being:
- CreatedOn: When was the document generated?
- TemplateName: Which template was used?
- TotalDuration: How long did the overall action (create, convert, save back) take?
- CreateDocTimeSpan: How long did the incorporation of data into your template take?
- SaveDocTimeSpan: How long did it take to save the document back to Dynamics as a note or to SharePoint (if chosen)?
As you can see, we provide a set of numbers with respect to performance. The specification is in milliseconds. To give you an idea: On average, our customers’ documents take between 1 and 2 seconds per document to generate (not processed). If it takes significantly longer it might be worth checking the template for possible performance issues, such as:
- Images: The number and file size of images has a significant impact on performance. Very often it is possible to replace images with a version in a format that has a smaller filesize.
- Unused relationships: Quite often there are relationships resolved inside documents that load data that is actually never needed inside the document.
Additionally, you can use the Group option to gather further insights, such as grouping by TemplateName to find out which template was used how often, or which was not used at all.
3. Data Usage Charts
This option shows how many documents were generated per year/month and how large these documents were in total. Since every license comes with a certain number of documents included, this number gives you an idea of where you are at and if it is necessary to buy additional licenses. You can start with the yearly view, and then select a year column to view the months for that year.
That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.