Rails Error Dashboard

Settings Dashboard

The Settings page shows the configuration your running app loaded, read-only. Use it to check which features are on after a deploy, without reading the initializer and the environment variables it uses.

Opening the page

Click Settings, with the sliders icon, at the bottom of the dashboard’s sidebar (on a phone, it is in the menu). Or open /red/settings. Like the rest of the dashboard, it needs the dashboard login.

What the page shows

The page lists options by group. Each row has the option’s name as you write it in the initializer, its current value, and a one-line description. Click a group’s heading to fold it; the first time, it takes two clicks.

The values are the ones the app loaded at boot: your initializer, the environment variables it reads, and RED’s defaults for everything you didn’t set. After you change the initializer or an environment variable, restart the app before checking here.

Some rows appear only when their feature is on. For example, slack_webhook_url appears only while enable_slack_notifications is on.

Some rows show what RED worked out rather than what you wrote: application_name, user_model and total_users_for_impact are detected when you leave them unset (the last from a live count of your users), and the issue tracker’s provider and repository come from git_repository_url when you leave them unset.

Group Options
Core Features enable_middleware, enable_error_subscriber, retention_days, max_backtrace_lines, sampling_rate
Multi-App Support application_name, environment, database, use_separate_database
User Integration user_model, total_users_for_impact
Performance Settings async_logging, async_adapter, enable_rate_limiting, rate_limit_per_minute
Notification Channels notification_environments, notification_burst_limit, notification_burst_window_seconds, and for each channel (Slack, email, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, webhooks) its switch and its URL, key, token or recipients (for email, also notification_email_from; for Telegram, telegram_chat_id and telegram_api_base_url; for webhooks, webhook_signing_secret); then enable_scheduled_digests, digest_frequency, digest_recipients
Advanced Analytics Features enable_similar_errors, enable_co_occurring_errors, enable_error_cascades, enable_error_correlation, enable_platform_comparison, enable_occurrence_patterns, enable_baseline_alerts, baseline_alert_threshold_std_devs, baseline_alert_severities, baseline_alert_cooldown_minutes
Source Code Integration enable_source_code_integration, source_code_context_lines, enable_git_blame, source_code_cache_ttl, only_show_app_code_source, git_branch_strategy
Breadcrumbs enable_breadcrumbs, breadcrumb_buffer_size, enable_n_plus_one_detection, n_plus_one_threshold
System Health enable_system_health
Enhanced Metrics app_version, git_sha, git_repository_url, dashboard_base_url
Issue Tracking enable_issue_tracking, issue_tracker_token, issue_tracker_provider, issue_tracker_repo, issue_tracker_labels, issue_webhook_secret
Deep Debugging enable_local_variables, enable_instance_variables, detect_swallowed_exceptions, enable_diagnostic_dump, enable_crash_capture, enable_coverage_tracking
Event Tracking enable_rack_attack_tracking, enable_missing_translation_tracking, enable_actioncable_tracking, enable_activestorage_tracking
Advanced Configuration custom_severity_rules, ignored_exceptions
Internal Logging enable_internal_logging, log_level

Not every option is on the page. The LLM observability options, for one, aren’t shown. The Configuration Guide has them all.

After the groups come two cards:

  • Active Plugins lists the plugins you registered, with their name, version, description, and whether each is active. See the Plugin System.
  • Test Notifications has a Send Test Error button. After you confirm, it records a RailsErrorDashboard::TestError, which is critical, and notifies every channel that is on and configured, PagerDuty included. Every click notifies: when the usual rules hold a notification back (a repeat of the last test error, or an environment outside notification_environments), the button sends it anyway. Warn whoever PagerDuty pages before you click it.

How values are shown

Kind Shown as
Switches Enabled or Disabled
Numbers The number, with its unit where it has one: “100 lines”, “3600 seconds”, “2.0σ”
Lists and rules A count: “3 items”, “2 rules”
Symbols and strings The value, such as :silent
Unset values Not set; an empty list shows Empty
Credentials Only Set or Not set: slack_webhook_url, discord_webhook_url, pagerduty_integration_key, webhook_urls, webhook_signing_secret, telegram_bot_token, issue_tracker_token, issue_webhook_secret (every option in Configuration::SECRET_ATTRIBUTES)

Before 0.15.0, the Slack and Discord webhook URLs and the PagerDuty key were shown in full.

Rows that need a second look

  • retention_days shows the number of days and that RetentionCleanupJob deletes errors not seen for that long once your scheduler runs it. Nothing in the gem schedules it. See Schedule the periodic jobs.
  • async_adapter is only checked for a valid value. RED’s jobs run on your app’s Active Job adapter. See Run a worker for RED’s jobs.
  • digest_frequency is the period ScheduledDigestJob reports on when you schedule it without one. Digests still go out only as often as you schedule the job.
  • Enabled doesn’t mean working. A switch can be on while its jobs never run, or before there is enough data to show. To check the setup itself, run bin/rails error_dashboard:verify.

Reading the configuration in code

config = RailsErrorDashboard.configuration
config.async_logging   # => true
config.retention_days  # => 90

There is no JSON endpoint for it. Inspecting the configuration object (p config) shows [FILTERED] in place of passwords, tokens, keys and webhook URLs.

Troubleshooting

The page shows a different value than the initializer

The initializer probably reads an environment variable, and the page shows what that variable held when the app booted:

config.slack_webhook_url = ENV["SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL"]

Check the variable in the environment the app runs in, then restart the app.

A feature shows Enabled but does nothing

  • Jobs aren’t running. Saving errors with async_logging, notifications and the periodic jobs need a worker. See Running in Production.
  • A channel has no URL. A channel’s row for its URL or key shows Not set.
  • Not enough data yet. Analytics pages say so when they have too little to show.

You can’t open the page

  • 401: the HTTP Basic login is wrong. Check ERROR_DASHBOARD_USER and ERROR_DASHBOARD_PASSWORD in the environment the app runs in; see Dashboard Credentials. A browser can keep an old login: try a private window.
  • 403: your authenticate_with block returned false. If the log has [RailsErrorDashboard] authenticate_with lambda raised, the block itself fails. See Custom Authentication.