Best practice forum (Archived)

Messages Report Source - missing data

Hi,

Can someone please confirm why suddenly our 'Messages' report (using the Messages report source) contains no historic data before 1st July 17. It looks like the historical messages data from the July 2016 to June 2017 financial year has been automatically purged.

I thought maybe I had accidentally selected 'the previous financial year' on the Content tab in the report, but there is no 'Show by time created' fields in the Content tab in this report source. Only 'Show all records' is selected and I am logged in as our site administrator. I've no filters selected and I can't find any obvious settings in Totara that would allow an automatic purge of data. All I could find was Site Admin > Report builder > General settings, where you can define the start of the financial year.

Is this normal behaviour or have I missed a setting?

I rely on this report when a learner advises they haven't completed a course because they didn't get an email to advise they have been enrolled in a program.

We're using Totara V 2.9.18

Thanks,

Michelle

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Hi Michelle

There is a Dismiss message option in the messages report so theorectically a report for all users could be created and all records selected and Dismissed which deletes the messages from the report.

I couldn't find the dismiss action in the Site Logs so might be hard to check. The logs just showed that the report had been viewed.

regards

Craig

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Thanks Craig.

The strange thing is, there's only 2 of us in the organisation with access to this report and I'm the only one who uses it and I've definitely not dismissed the messages because I use them regularly and rely on them heavily. I looked at the report again this morning and now I don't have messages appearing earlier than the 8th July. When I posted my initial query to this forum the report contained messages from the 2nd July.

I'm really confused.

Thanks, Michelle

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Hi Michelle

There is a setting for how long to keep standard logs for - the default is unlimited (Site admin > Plugins > Logging > Standard log)

regards

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Thanks Craig - I was excited for a moment, thinking this might be the cause but unfortunately the setting is already set to 'never delete logs'.

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Hi Michelle

Ok one other possibility is the Messages report may have a setting on it such as in the Content restriction on the report such as include records from The last 30 days

Can you create a support ticket if this isn't the case and we will get this looked at.

regards

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Hi Craig - I've logged a ticket (#7355) as there's no date/period related Content restrictions available in the Content tab in the Messages report source. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Regards, Michelle

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Hi Michelle

That helped me find the cause for some reason.

I have found a ticket for an improvement for version 9 TL-10429 that explains what is happening.

The 'Process messages and alerts' task automatically dismisses messages after 30 days. To prevent this in the scheduled task disable this task - this will mean the file will keep growing but should be manageable..

Version 9 has renamed this task to 'Dismiss alerts and tasks after 30 days' and created a separate task to cleanup messaging related data so this can be run when required.

regards

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