Error reporting and feature usage from service application?

williamw

As far as I can tell SA does not support error reporting or feature usage reporting from services or console apps. Are there any plans to add this capability?

dom.smith

Hi,

Automatic Error Reporting and Feature Usage Reporting do work with console applications and services.

In both cases, select the 'Automatic (without dialog box)' template. This ensures that errors and features are always reported. SmartAssembly does not try to open a dialog box to ask for the user's permission.

Obviously, because SmartAssembly cannot open a dialog box on the end-user's computer in these cases, you will need to ensure that you take account of any privacy implications.

Hope that helps,

Dom.

williamw

Thanks--that's the piece I was missing. What is the best way to turn automatic reporting off or on programmatically after I get permission from the user during installation? Do I just build my own UnhandledExceptionHandler and UsageReporter classes that check for a saved setting, and point to those as the templates?

dom.smith

Hi,

For Automatic Error Reporting, yes, your solution is the best one: create a custom template using the UnhandledExceptionHandler and only report if some saved setting is set.

For Feature Usage Reporting, the best thing to do would be to set the registry key that the other templates provided by SmartAssembly would normally set when consent is given. That registry key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\[CompanyName]\[ApplicationName]\SmartAssemblyReportUsage Set the value to True if the user gives consent, or set it to False if the user does not consent. Use the Automatic template as normal. Features are not reported by the Automatic template if the value of this key is False. Note: this is not accurate. See the correction post below.

Best wishes,

Dom.

dom.smith

Hi again,

The developers have just informed me that the Automatic template for Feature Usage Reporting doesn't in fact respect the registry key mentioned above. So your solution of using a custom template with the UsageReporter class is required.

Sorry for the confusion.

Dom.