Can’t find that Qlik Sense log file from last week?

It can be difficult and time consuming to find old reload logs in Qlik Sense. Butler makes this easier by storing logs for all failed reloads in a central location, with separate directories for different dates.

Can’t find that Qlik Sense log file from last week?
Photo by wu yi / Unsplash

Butler 7.2 to the rescue!

Yep, a new version of your friendly Qlik Sense helper has been released.
Buter 7.2 adds a few really nice features:

  • Standalone, pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux. No more installing Node.js first – just download Butler and run. It’s now easier to get started with Butler than ever before!
  • Config file location and log level configurable via command line options. No more finding the config file, change log level, debug, change log level back. Time saver!
  • Save script logs of failed reload tasks in an easy to access location. Simplifies investigations around what caused reloads to fail!

If you are looking for getting-started instructions, reference docs, examples and more – that’s all available at Butler’s dedicated documentation site butler.ptarmiganlabs.com.

All releases are available on GitHub, there you also find forums for bug reports, discussion new features and more.

Standalone, pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux

This might seem like a small release but it’s been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now.

Being able to run a tool like Butler as a single executable greatly simplifies both the initial work needed to getting started, as well as ongoing operations and maintenance.

Simply put: Using Butler with Qlik Sense just got easier.

Easy access to script logs of failed reloads

When a reload task fails the script logs are written to disk on the Sense server(s). This is how Qlik Sense works out of the box.

Let’s say a reload failed a few times during the past days but also sometimes completed successfully. You probably want to to look at all the logs from the failed reload attempts.

All good – except that it can be a real pain to manually find all those logs on the Sense server. You have to log into the server, search through potentially thousands of log files to find those few that you are interested in.

Butler now offers a better option: Just enable the “store failed reload logs to disk” feature, specify where the logs should be stored and your’e done.

The log files are kept in a date-based directory hierarchy with both app and task ID included in the file names:

.
├── butler.exe
├── log
│   └── butler.2022-04-07.log
├── production.yaml
└── scriptlog
    ├── 2022-04-06
    │   ├── 2022-04-06_15-36-12_appId=deba4bcf-47e4-472e-97b2-4fe8d6498e11_taskId=0d815a99-1ca3-4131-a398-6878bd735fd8.log
    │   └── 2022-04-06_22-42-35_appId=66bc109d-286a-415b-8355-1422abb22133_taskId=e959f40a-67be-4a5b-ae83-a292f96ba078.log
    └── 2022-04-07
        └── 2022-04-07_05-49-16_appId=deba4bcf-47e4-472e-97b2-4fe8d6498e11_taskId=0d815a99-1ca3-4131-a398-6878bd735fd8.log

Two command line options are better than none

Previously Butler had no command line options what so ever.

That worked, but with the standalone executables introduced in version 7.2 there was a need to add at least an option via which you can specify which config file to use.

While at it another option was introduced too, giving us the --configfile and
--logfile options:

Usage: butler [options]

Butler gives superpowers to client-managed Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows!
Advanced reload failure alerts, task scheduler, key-value store, file system access and much more.

Options:
  -V, --version            output the version number
  -c, --configfile <file>  path to config file
  -l, --loglevel <level>   log level (choices: "error", "warn", "info", "verbose", "debug", "silly")
  -h, --help               display help for command