SAP Screen Personas Support Tips – client side logging

[TobiasQueck]

Over the past few weeks, I have received several questions about how to learn more information about what is happening on the client-side when SAP Screen Personas is running.

These questions usually come in one of the following two flavors. Either "I have configured a system but I seem to have missed something" or "One of my users has problems but it works fine for me".

Before you call customer support (your team or ours), you need to have the right information to determine what is going on.

Let's talk about the easier one first. You own a system, you configured it but something is wrong. If this happens to me, here is what I do:

1. Restart Personas with the url parameter log=debug i.e. .../index.html?sap-client=123&log=debug
2. Depending on your browser of choice (install and) open the corresponding debugging view
   1. IE9: Tools/F12 developer tools (or press F12)
   2. FF: We recommend to install Firebug
   3. Chrome: Menu/Tools/Developer Tools
3. Repeat the steps that lead to the wrong behavior
4. Check the communication i.e. is there any failing call e.g. 404 Not found or 500 Server error
   1. If the clientaccesspolicy.xml file is not found, make sure that you configured it correctly and that the files are where they should be
   2. If there is something wrong with calls to the restgui service
      1. 404: the service is not there or reachable: check the service in SICF
      2. 500: have a look at the response, it usually indicates what it could be e.g.
         1. Memory problem: check the amount of memory that is assigned to your ITS using the transaction SITSPMON
         2. Transaction dump: check the error report and identify the responsible action
   3. If there is something wrong with the Personas service e.g. 500 Server error
      1. Check the configuration guide for Personas and verify each step related to the services
      2. Check the url parameter of the failing service, this usually indicates what part of the configuration is incorrect
5. Check the console output
6. Now, you should have an idea what is wrong
   1. If it is a configuration issue, correct it, and try again
   2. If you cannot find it, ask an expert e.g.
      1. Ask on SCN and provide the content describe below
      2. Create an OSS message for the component XX-PROJ-CDP-271 with the content described below

Now let's talk about the tricky one, it works for you but it doesn't work for somebody else and you have to direct access to the computer on which it is not working. To be able to help, you should ask for the following (I am a Firefox user, so I describe how it should be done with Firefox, but I am sure the same is also possible with Chrome or IE)

1. Install Firefox if not yet available.
2. Install the Firebug plugin here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug
3. Restart Firefox
4. Open this link in firefox: http://getfirebug.com/releases/netexport/netExport-0.8b20.xpi  It will install an export button to the firebug netpanel
5. Restart Firefox
6. Open Firebug, switch to the net panel, activate logging, press clear
7. Open the url that points to Personas but add the url parameter log=debug e.g. ../index.html?sap-client=123&log=debug
8. Logon (If you cannot go further , generate a log here as mentioned in step 10)
9. Repeat the steps that don't work as expected
10. Finally, please export the net panel content as HAR file (firebug net-tab export) 
11. And, copy the log output which can be found in the console tab
12. Provide the logs and the HAR file

The easiest way to look at HAR files is using the online HAR viewer at http://www.softwareishard.com/har/viewer/.

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

Cheers,

Tobias.