Help us help you! If you experience an issue with your Productivity PLC, the System Report is our first tool to get you back up and running. But what’s inside? Here’s how it works and how it helps us help you:

The Process and The Options

To generate a System Report, open Productivity Suite, select the Help menu, and click ‘Create System Report’. A dialog will open showing a few options, including a desired save location:

Clicking ‘OK’ will create a System Report File in the selected location.

You may have noticed the two checkboxes in the above dialog. The first includes your PLC project in the system report. The second includes specific information about your PC, such as the CPU, network types, and information about your Windows environment, as well as tasks and files required by Productivity Suite. Typically, leaving both boxes checked is preferable, but deselecting some options may be requested by your customer or company.

The Contents

Once your System Report is created, you can find the file located in the folder you selected above. The file will be named “SystemReport.MM.DD.YYYY_HH.MM.SS.zip”, with the current date and time replacing the letters. This is the file Tech Support will request. If you open the zip file, the collection of files will look like this:

Here’s what they are and what they do:

• log (folder): This folder contains logs generated by the Productivity Suite programming environment, including issues found by the compiler, problems during transfers, and other faults that may arise during normal operation of the programming software.
• connection_info.txt: This file contains information about your current connection to the PLC (if any)
• cpu_proj.adpro: This is a copy of the project currently loaded on the connected CPU. If not connected, this file will not be generated.
• customer_proj.adpro: This file is a copy of the project currently in the programming software workspace.
• customer_proj_Basic.csv: This is the basic version of the tag database export file automatically created when saving a project.
• customer_proj_Extended.csv: This is the extended version of the tag database export file automatically created when saving a project. It includes additional information only useful to Productivity Suite, such as UDS definitions.
• hw_config.txt: This is a list of all configured hardware in the PLC project. It includes all Productivity I/O devices, as well as any configured communications devices.
• pac_history.txt: This file contains the CPU’s log of critical and non-critical errors, as well as the CPU’s event history log. It also contains the CPU’s current date and time (to compare against log entries) and scan interval information.
• restart.txt: This file contains the CPU’s log of the last time it experienced a System Restart
• sw_fw_versions.txt: This is a list of all software and firmware versions and build dates of any modules configured and connected to the CPU.
• system_info.txt: This file contains information about your PC, such as display settings, CPU type, hard drive storage capacity, Java versions, etc.
• system_perf.txt: This file contains both information about your PC’s hardware and system updates, plus system processes and extended information about the Java environment that Productivity Suite runs within.
• watchdog.txt: This file contains the CPU’s log of the last time it experienced a Watchdog event that terminated the scan.

The Reason

That’s a lot of different files and system information. Why do we need all of this?

At different times over the previous years, different tech support cases have required additional information from users. As Productivity Suite continues to grow, we weigh the value of including this information against the file size impact it would bring. All the information gathered in the files above has been required numerous times to help diagnose an issue with either a user installation or Productivity Suite itself. 

Summary

Software packages like Productivity Suite are a complex set of moving parts that rely on many interdependencies. Our ability to ‘peek under the hood’ of your installation can help us quickly solve your problem or identify bugs that we can fix for everyone.