Logging

Audience: Low-code Engineers

Skill Prerequisites: Actions, Tokens

The Logging actions record what your application is doing, without showing anything to the user. They write errors and tracing messages to the Plant an App log files, add entries to the site's Admin Logs, and record the context of an Automation job. The group also has an action that reads the client certificate a caller sent to an API endpoint.

Choosing an action

Action	What it does	Use it to
Log Error	Writes an error message to the log files and the Admin Logs. It's always written.	Record the details of a failure in an On Error list, before showing the user a friendly message.
Log Event	Adds an entry to the Admin Logs, with an event type, a user ID and properties you choose.	Record an admin alert, or keep a trail of important changes.
Log Debug Message / Log Debug Info	Writes a message to the log files at Debug level. It's only written when debug logging is turned on. They're the same action under two names: Log Debug Info is the name in Listings and User Guides.	Check the value of a token, or which actions ran, while you build or troubleshoot.
Log Job Context	Adds an entry to the job's history, and writes the whole job context, with every token, to the log files.	See which tokens a trigger passes to an Automation job.
Get Client Certificate Details	Reads the client certificate sent with a request to an API endpoint, and saves its thumbprint and issuer in tokens.	Allow only callers with a known certificate to call an API.

Where each message goes

• Log Error writes to the log files at Error level and to the Admin Logs. Errors are logged by default, so you don't need to turn anything on.
• Log Event adds an entry to the Admin Logs for the current portal. The event type is only a label for filtering. Choosing USER_CREATED, for example, doesn't create a user.
• Log Debug Message and Log Debug Info write to the log files at Debug level, which is off by default.
• Log Job Context adds an entry to the job's Automation History, and writes an Information entry to the log files, which is off by default.

Where to find them:

• Log files are daily files in Portals/_default/Logs/PlantAnApp/ on the server. By default only errors are logged. To see Debug or Information entries, lower the log level. See Turning on debug logging.
• Admin Logs are under Logs > Event in the Plant an App configuration.

Where they run

• Log Debug Message is available in all modules except Listings and User Guides. There, use Log Debug Info, which is the same action under another name.
• Log Job Context is only available in Automation jobs.
• Get Client Certificate Details is only available in API endpoints. The web server must accept client certificates, and the request must use HTTPS. If the request has no certificate, the action fails.

Log Error, Log Event, Log Debug Message and Log Job Context never fail because of the message, and the actions after them keep running.

Considerations

• Don't log secrets. Administrators can read the Admin Logs, and the log files are plain text on the server. Log Job Context writes every token in the job, so passwords or personal data the job handles end up in the log file.
• Logs aren't a data store. Logs can be cleared, and debug logging is usually off. Save data you need to query or report on to your own table with Run SQL Query.
• Clean up. Turn debug logging off again when you're done, and remove Log Job Context from a job once you've seen what you need. Every run adds an extra history entry.
• To stop the process, use Throw Exception. Logging an error doesn't stop anything.

For handling errors, see Flow.

Revised 10/02/2026