Avanteam Application Surveillance and Monitoring

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Surveillance and monitoring

System surveillance is essential to ensure the stability and performance of your Avanteam application. It enables proactive problem detection, ensures maximum availability for users, and maintains optimal service quality.

Monitoring principles

Surveillance objectives

Application surveillance fulfills several critical functions:

Availability:

• Verify that the application is accessible
• Detect service interruptions
• Measure availability rate

Performance:

• Monitor response times
• Identify slowdowns
• Optimize user experience

Prevention:

• Anticipate problems before they impact users
• Identify concerning trends
• Plan preventive maintenance

Diagnostics:

• Understand the origin of malfunctions
• Accelerate incident resolution
• Provide elements to technical support

Types of surveillance

Application surveillance:

• Avanteam application status
• Accessible features
• Page and module performance

System surveillance:

• Web server (IIS)
• Database (SQL Server)
• Disk space and memory
• Processor

Network surveillance:

• Connectivity
• Bandwidth
• Latency

Surveillance tools

Email connectivity test

Email sending is critical for workflow and notification functionality.

Access: AdminTools menu > Select Email sending test (CheckSendMail.aspx)

Usage

Available fields:

Field	Description
To	Recipient email address (required)
From	Sender address (pre-filled)
CC	Copy addresses (optional)
Subject	Test email subject
Message	Message body
Attachments	File to attach (complete test)

Send options:

• Synchronous: Immediate send with confirmation wait
• Asynchronous (with wait): Queue with result wait
• Asynchronous (no wait): Queue without waiting

Buttons:

• Clear: Reset the form
• Send: Launch the test

Diagnostics

Successful test:

• Confirmation message displayed
• Email received in inbox
• No error messages

Failed test:

• Detailed error message
• Possible causes:
  • Incorrect SMTP configuration
  • Authentication refused
  • Blocked port (firewall)
  • Mail server unavailable
  • Invalid sender address

Corrective actions:

1. Check SMTP configuration in Web.config
2. Test SMTP server connectivity (telnet, ping)
3. Verify authentication credentials
4. Check firewalls (Windows, network)
5. Review Windows event logs
6. Contact system or network administrator

Use cases

After configuration modification:

• SMTP server change
• Authentication parameter modification
• Migration to Office 365 / Azure

Problem diagnosis:

• Users not receiving notifications
• Emails stuck in queue
• Errors in logs

Recommendation: Perform a test in "Synchronous" mode to get immediate feedback and detailed error messages.

Active sessions

Session monitoring helps understand actual application usage.

Access: AdminTools > MngUserInfo

Displayed information

Columns:

Column	Description	Usage
User name	Complete identity	Identify who is connected
IP address	Network location	Detect abnormal access
Connection time	Last authentication moment	Session duration
Last activity	Last action timestamp	Identify inactive sessions
Session ID	Unique technical identifier	Technical support

Usage

Before maintenance:

1. Verify no users are connected
2. If active sessions:
   • Contact users
   • Ask them to disconnect
   • Schedule maintenance at another time
3. If phantom sessions (inactive > 2h):
   • Force disconnection if necessary

Problem diagnosis:

• User reports a problem → Check if properly connected
• Long inactive session → May block resources
• Multiple sessions for same user → Investigate cause

Capacity and load:

• Count number of active sessions
• Identify peak hours
• Size infrastructure accordingly
• Detect abnormal spikes

Security:

• Identify connections from unusual IPs
• Detect suspicious multiple sessions
• Force disconnection in case of compromise

Actions

Force disconnection:

1. Identify problematic session
2. Click "Disconnect" action (if available)
3. Or restart Application Pool (more drastic)
4. Inform the user

Precautions:

• Warn user if possible
• Document the action
• Verify no work in progress is lost

Scheduled tasks

Automatic tasks are the heart of Avanteam functionality.

Access: AdminTools > ProcessTimers

Critical tasks

Incremental indexing:

• Frequency: Every 5-15 minutes
• Role: Search index update
• Impact if stopped: New documents not searchable

Active Directory synchronization:

• Frequency: Daily (night)
• Role: User import/update
• Impact if stopped: New employees not created

Deferred notification sending:

• Frequency: Every 1-5 minutes
• Role: Email queue processing
• Impact if stopped: Notifications not sent

Log purge:

• Frequency: Weekly
• Role: Old log cleanup
• Impact if stopped: Database growth

Indicator calculation:

• Frequency: Daily
• Role: Dashboard update
• Impact if stopped: Obsolete indicators

Surveillance

Available columns:

Column	Information	Analysis
Name	Task name	Identification
Service	Responsible component	Technical context
Start date	Next execution	Planning
Last execution	Last run	Check regularity
Attempt count	Counter	Detect repeated errors
Status	Active / Disabled	State

Watch points:

• Task not run for long time → Problem
• High attempt count → Repeated errors
• Next execution in the past → Blocked task

Actions

Force execution:

1. Select the task
2. Click "Execute now"
3. Wait for processing completion
4. Check result (logs)

Enable / Disable:

• Temporarily disable during maintenance
• Reactivate after intervention
• Document changes

Modify frequency (advanced administrators only):

• Adjust according to business needs
• Test impact on performance
• Document modification

Review history:

• Identify recurring errors
• Analyze execution times
• Optimize if necessary

Application Pool status

Access: AdminTools > ApplicationPool

Available information

Information	Description
Pool name	IIS identifier
State	Running (OK) / Stopped (KO)
Execution account	Service account used
.NET version	Framework
Uptime	Duration since last startup
Memory used	RAM consumed

Diagnostics

Health indicators:

• State = Running: Application operational
• State = Stopped: Application inaccessible
• Short uptime (less than 1h): Frequent restarts (problem)
• High memory (>2GB): Possible memory leak

Actions:

• Restart pool: Solves many problems (cache, memory)
• Check logs: Understand why pool stopped
• Adjust IIS configuration: Memory limits, recycling

Indexing statistics

Access: AdminTools > AdminFulltextIndex

Indicators

Index status:

• Number of indexed documents vs total
• Number of indexed files (attachments)
• Index size
• Last update date

Analysis:

• If indexed documents < total: Indexing behind
• If size > 10GB: Optimization recommended
• If last update > 1h: Scheduled task blocked?

Actions:

• Force reindexing: Updates complete index
• Optimization: Defragments and accelerates
• Explore index: Debug specific document

Key performance indicators (KPI)

Availability

Definition: Percentage of time the application is accessible

Objective: > 99% (excluding planned maintenance)

Calculation:

Availability = (Total time - Downtime) / Total time × 100

Measurement:

• External monitoring tool (e.g.: UptimeRobot)
• User connection logs
• Incident reports

Performance

Average response time:

• Objective: < 2 seconds
• Measurement: IIS logs, monitoring tools

Page load time:

• Objective: < 3 seconds
• Measurement: Browser (F12 > Network)

Search time:

• Objective: < 1 second
• Measurement: User tests

Volume metrics

Simultaneous connected users:

• Usual peak: X users
• Maximum capacity: Y users
• Alert threshold: 80% of capacity

Documents created per day:

• Average: X documents
• Peak: Y documents
• Trend: Z% growth per month

Disk space:

• Used: X GB
• Available: Y GB
• Alert threshold: < 20% available

Alerts and notifications

Alert configuration

Alert criteria:

• Application inaccessible > 5 minutes
• Response time > 5 seconds
• Disk space < 20%
• Scheduled task failure > 3 times
• Server memory > 80%

Recipients:

• System administrators
• Application administrators
• N2 support (depending on severity)

Methods:

• Email
• SMS (critical incidents)
• Ticketing system

Escalation procedure

Level 1 - Warning:

• Email notification
• Check within 2 hours
• Corrective actions if necessary

Level 2 - Error:

• Email + SMS notification
• Intervention within an hour
• Diagnosis and resolution

Level 3 - Critical:

• Immediate notification all channels
• Immediate intervention
• Escalate to vendor support if necessary
• User communication

Dashboards

Application health dashboard

Indicators to display:

• Current state: Operational / Degraded / Unavailable
• Month availability (%)
• Number of connected users
• Average response time
• Last critical error
• Next planned maintenance

Tools:

• GraphBuilder charts
• Custom widget on admin portal
• External tools (Grafana, PowerBI)

Monthly reports

Content:

• Month availability
• Number of incidents and their duration
• Maintenance performed
• Performance evolution
• Improvement actions realized
• Plan for next month

Recipients:

• IT management
• Application manager
• Support team

Best practices

Proactive surveillance

Daily:

• Check active sessions
• Review scheduled tasks (all ran?)
• Verify disk space

Weekly:

• Analyze error logs
• Check performance (response time)
• Test email sending

Monthly:

• Generate availability report
• Optimize search index
• Purge old logs
• Analyze trends

Quarterly:

• Complete configuration audit
• Review alerts and thresholds
• Load tests if possible
• Update documentation

Documentation

To document:

• Monitoring configuration
• Defined alert thresholds
• Intervention procedures
• Incident history
• Corrective actions taken

Training

Administrators:

• Train on tool usage
• Simulate incidents
• Document procedures
• Organize experience feedback

Business case: Slowdown detection

Situation: Users report that the application has been slow since this morning

Diagnosis:

1. Active sessions: 45 users (normal)
2. Application Pool: Memory at 3.2 GB (high, normal < 2GB)
3. Scheduled tasks: Indexing running for 2h (abnormal)
4. Logs: Database timeout error

Actions:

1. Stop current indexing task
2. Restart Application Pool (frees memory)
3. Check database (fragmentation, statistics)
4. Optimize search index
5. Restart indexing
6. Monitor performance
7. Communicate to users that it's resolved

Prevention:

• Schedule weekly index optimization
• Adjust memory alert thresholds
• Monitor database size

Support

To implement advanced monitoring (external tools, integration with existing supervision), contact Avanteam support.