Log Job Context

Audience: Low-code Engineers

Skill Prerequisites: Automation, Tokens

Records a message in the job's history, and writes the full job context, with all its tokens, to the Plant an App log files. It doesn't change anything else. Use it to see what data an Automation job is working with.

This action is only available in Automation jobs.

Typical Use Cases

• Check which tokens a trigger passes to a job, for example the values from an incoming email or a workflow
• Mark a point in a job's run, with a message, in the job history
• Record the value of a token at a certain step while building a job

Don't use it to

• Log from Forms, Listings or other modules. Use Log Debug Message or Log Error.
• Record errors. Use Log Error.

Related Actions

Action Name	Description
Log Debug Message	Writes a message to the log files at Debug level.
Log Error	Writes a message to the log files at Error level.
Log Event	Writes an entry to the event log.

Input Parameter Reference

Parameter	Description	Supports Tokens	Default	Required
Message	A message to save with the history entry and the log entry, for example Processing file [FileName].	Yes	empty string	No

What it records

Each time the action runs, it records two things:

Where	What
Automation History	A separate history entry for the job, with status Unknown, the trigger that started the run, and the Message.
Log files	An Information entry with the whole job context, including every token, followed by the Message.

The log files are in Portals/_default/Logs/PlantAnApp/ on the server. By default, only errors are logged. To see the Information entry, lower Serilog > MinimumLevel in DesktopModules/DnnSharp/Common/Config/appsettings.json to Information or Debug. See Log Debug Info for an example.

Considerations

• Remove it when you're done. Every run adds an extra history entry, which makes the job history harder to read.
• The log entry contains every token in the job context. If the job handles passwords or personal data, they end up in the log file.
• The action never fails because of the message, and the actions after it always run.

Examples

tip

To understand how to use the below examples, please see Running Examples.

1. Check what a trigger sends

Add this as the first action of a job to see the tokens the trigger provides.

{
    "Title": "Log Job Context",
    "ActionType": "DebugLogging",
    "Description": "Show the trigger's tokens",
    "Parameters": {
        "Message": "Job started by trigger"
    }
}

Revised 09/26/2026