Practice Activity is a summary of any updates to and from Xero Practice Manager and other app integrations. Practice Activity displays FYI-defined important events including errors, warnings, service interruptions and delays. These are typically batches, errors occurring multiple times, errors relating to asynchronous events where there is no other way of checking what the activity did.
A Practice Activity View can be used as a Filter in a Custom Process. This allows a Summary Notification step to be added to the Process as a notification to a specific user about certain events, for example, if an event has a Status of "Failure" or "Action Required". Refer to Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notifications.
Note: The Practice Activity gives information on batch or background activities. It does not show actions that are recorded for individual documents that are shown in the Activity section of the document.
Displaying the Practice Activity
Practice Activity is accessed from the Practice menu option. It is available only to FYI Admins, or a user in a User Group that has Permissions enabled for Practice Activity.
The Practice Activity list is used in the same way as the Documents lists, without the search function. For example, you can sort and filter the columns in the same way as the Documents lists. Refer to the section Using the Documents Lists.
Right-click on a field to copy the contents of that field, for example, the details.
Status
Events display with the Status of "Success", "Failure", "In Progress", "Action Required" or "Alert".
- Events that were successful display the Status "Success".
- Events still being processed will display as "In Progress".
- When updates have been made as a batch, any events with a Status of "Failure" or "Action Required" display separately from the "Success" events so the failed events can be identified and investigated.
- "Failure" is an event, such as the sync of a record to Xero Practice Manager, that failed.
- "Action Required" is an event that requires attention as it will cause more errors, for example, if there is an authentication error with an integration app such as BGL.
- "Alert" events display where important changes have been made within FYI, such as changes to the Practice AutoFile Defaults or to the Email AutoFile Settings.
Details
The Details column includes more information on the event, showing how many changes were made.
- Processed - The number of bulk updates processed successfully.
- Errors - The number of updates that failed to sync to Xero Practice Manager. Click the row to display the Activity Drawer, and view more details on the failures with reasons. Click the Retry option to resync the entire batch. Note this will reduce the daily available requests for XPM, refer to Xero Practice Manager Rate Limiting.
- Pending - The number of bulk updates still in the process of synchronising. The results will be updated in the automation history.
Sorting and Filtering
The columns can be sorted and filters can be applied to narrow the results. Click the Columns and Filters on the tabs on the left of the screen, or hover over the column heading to view the List icon.
Selecting and Saving Views
At the top of Practice Activity is the View Selector, used to display the views that can be selected for the list. Default views appear at the top of the View selector with a divider, followed by the saved views.
The View must have been set to Available For - Lists to be displayed in the View Selector. Refer to Managing Views.
Where there are more than 10 Views for the list, the View Selector displays with a scroll bar.
Depending on how this has been set for your practice, the view you select in a particular list will be the default for the rest of the session, or when you log out and log in again. Refer to Sticky Views.
You can create custom Views to save a particular layout with columns and filters. For example, if a user needs to know if a specific App was not successful, a view can be saved with a filter set for that App and a filter for Status set as other than "Success". This allows the user to access the information quickly and easily, rather than having to filter each time.
A Practice Activity View can also be selected as a Filter in a Custom Process. Refer to Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notifications.
Displaying the Drawer for a Practice Activity
Clicking on an entry in the Practice Activity displays the drawer with a summary of what was processed. This is useful to see the details of any activities that have failed or that are still in progress.
Resubmitting a "Failure" Status Event
Where an event has a Status of "Failure", if there is an action that can be taken to correct the failure, in the drawer the event shows the Resubmit button.
For example, if a Job has been set to a Job State that exists in FYI but has not yet been synced to Xero Practice Manager, this will show as a "Failure" in the Practice Activity.
Selecting the event in Practice Activity displays the drawer with a detailed message, for example, "Need to add the relevant state to xpm and resubmit the job".
For a failed event that cannot be resubmitted, the Resubmit button is not available. For example, if a Job has been set as completed in Xero Practice Manager before a Time Entry has synced for it, this will show in Practice Activity as a "Failure" but cannot be resubmitted.
Check Automation Activity and Retry
You can click on an "Alert" event to display the Activity drawer. The Details section will provide more information about the event, and include buttons to Check Automation Activity and Retry.
- Check Automation Activity - You will be redirected to the Process History, where a list of successes and errors will be displayed. Refer to Process History and Activity.
- Retry - You will be able to retry the activity that failed. For Xero Practice Manager, this will synchronise the entire batch, reducing the daily available requests. Refer to Xero Practice Manager Rate Limiting.
"Action Required" Event
You can click on an "Action Required" Event to display the drawer and click the Go to App button to open that App in the Automations - Apps, for example, to check the connection.
