Rails Error Dashboard

Settings Dashboard

The Settings page provides a read-only view of your Rails Error Dashboard configuration, making it easy to verify which features are enabled and review current settings without digging through initializer files.

Accessing Settings

Navigate to the Settings page from the main dashboard:

  1. Click the gear icon (⚙️) in the navigation bar
  2. Or visit /error_dashboard/settings directly

Authentication: Requires authentication (HTTP Basic Auth or custom authenticate_with lambda)

Settings Overview

The Settings page is organized into eight sections:

1. Core Features

Shows the status of fundamental dashboard features:

  • Error Middleware: Whether the error-catching middleware is active
  • Rails.error Subscriber: Whether Rails 7+ error reporter integration is active
  • Authentication: Confirms authentication is always enforced (HTTP Basic Auth or custom lambda)
  • Data Retention: Number of days errors are kept before auto-deletion
  • Max Backtrace Lines: Stack trace depth limit
  • Sampling Rate: Percentage of errors being logged (100% = all errors)

Example Display:

Error Middleware                 ✓ Enabled
Rails.error Subscriber          ✓ Enabled
Authentication                   🔒 Always Required
Data Retention                   90 days
Max Backtrace Lines              50 lines
Sampling Rate                    100%

2. Performance Settings

Displays async logging and database optimization settings:

  • Async Logging: Whether errors are logged in background jobs
    • Shows the adapter being used in parentheses (e.g., “Sidekiq”, “:async”)
  • Separate Database: Whether errors use a dedicated database

Example Display:

Async Logging                    ✓ Enabled (Sidekiq)
Separate Database                ✗ Disabled

When separate database is enabled:

Separate Database                ✓ Enabled

3. Notification Channels

Shows which notification channels are configured and active:

  • Slack Notifications: Webhook URL (masked) and status
  • Email Notifications: Recipients count and status
  • Discord Notifications: Webhook URL (masked) and status
  • PagerDuty Notifications: Integration key (masked) and status
  • Custom Webhooks: Number of configured webhooks

Example Display:

Slack Notifications              ✓ Enabled (https://hooks.slack...T123)
Email Notifications              ✓ Enabled (3 recipients)
Discord Notifications            ✗ Disabled
PagerDuty Notifications          ✓ Enabled (Critical errors only)
Custom Webhooks                  2 configured

Security Note: Webhook URLs and sensitive keys are partially masked for security (e.g., https://hooks.slack.com/services/...T123).

4. Advanced Analytics Features

Displays the status of all 7 advanced analytics features:

  • Similar Errors (Fuzzy Matching): Fuzzy error matching with Jaccard/Levenshtein algorithms
  • Co-occurring Errors: Errors happening together detection
  • Error Cascades: Parent→child error relationship tracking
  • Error Correlation: Version/user/time correlation analysis
  • Platform Comparison: iOS vs Android analytics and health comparison
  • Occurrence Patterns: Cyclical and burst pattern detection
  • Baseline Alerts: Statistical anomaly detection (shows threshold in standard deviations)

Example Display:

Similar Errors                   ✓ Enabled
Co-occurring Errors              ✓ Enabled
Error Cascades                   ✗ Disabled
Error Correlation                ✓ Enabled
Platform Comparison              ✓ Enabled
Occurrence Patterns              ✗ Disabled
Baseline Alerts                  ✓ Enabled (2.0 std devs)

Baseline Alert Details: When baseline alerts are enabled, additional information is shown:

  • Threshold (standard deviations)
  • Cooldown period (minutes between alerts)
  • Severities being monitored

5. Active Plugins

Shows registered custom plugins and their status:

  • Plugin Name: The name of the plugin
  • Version: Plugin version number
  • Description: Brief description of what the plugin does
  • Status: Whether the plugin is active or inactive

Example Display:

Plugin Name Version Description Status
Jira Plugin 1.0.0 Create Jira tickets ✓ Active
Metrics Plugin 1.0.0 Export to DataDog ✓ Active
Audit Log 1.0.0 Track all changes ⏸ Inactive

When no plugins are registered:

No plugins are currently registered. You can create custom plugins to extend functionality.

See Plugin System Guide for how to create custom plugins.

6. Breadcrumbs

Shows breadcrumb (request activity trail) configuration:

  • Breadcrumbs: Whether breadcrumb collection is enabled
  • Buffer Size: Maximum breadcrumbs per request (shown when breadcrumbs enabled)

Example Display:

Breadcrumbs                      ✓ Enabled
Buffer Size                      40 events

7. Enhanced Metrics

Displays additional context being tracked with errors (shown only if any of these are configured):

  • App Version: Application version string
  • Git SHA: Git commit SHA being tracked (with clickable link if git_repo_url configured)
  • Total Users: User count for impact percentage calculations

Example Display:

App Version                      1.2.3
Git SHA                          abc123d (linked to commit)
Total Users                      10,000

Note: This section only appears when at least one of these values is configured in your initializer.

8. Internal Logging

Shows gem debugging and logging settings:

  • Internal Logging: Whether the gem outputs debug logs
  • Log Level: Verbosity level (INFO, DEBUG, WARN, ERROR)

Example Display:

Internal Logging                 ✗ Disabled
Log Level                        INFO

When enabled (not recommended for production):

Internal Logging                 ⚠ Enabled
Log Level                        DEBUG

9. Deep Debugging (v0.4.0)

Shows v0.4.0 deep debugging feature settings:

  • Local Variable Capture: Whether local variables are captured via TracePoint at exception time
  • Instance Variable Capture: Whether instance variables are captured from the raising object
  • Swallowed Exception Detection: Whether silently rescued exceptions are detected (requires Ruby 3.3+)
  • Diagnostic Dump: Whether on-demand system state snapshots are available
  • Rack Attack Tracking: Whether Rack::Attack events are tracked as breadcrumbs
  • Process Crash Capture: Whether at_exit hook captures crashes

Example Display:

Local Variables                  ✓ Enabled (max: 15, depth: 3)
Instance Variables               ✓ Enabled (max: 20)
Swallowed Exception Detection    ✓ Enabled (threshold: 0.95, Ruby 3.3+)
Diagnostic Dump                  ✓ Enabled
Rack Attack Tracking             ✗ Disabled (requires breadcrumbs)
Process Crash Capture            ✓ Enabled (path: /tmp)

Use Cases

1. Verify Feature Activation

Scenario: You enabled baseline alerts in the initializer but want to confirm it’s active.

Solution: Check the “Advanced Analytics Features” section (Section 4) for “Baseline Alerts” status.

2. Audit Production Configuration

Scenario: Before deploying to production, verify which features are enabled.

Solution: Review all sections to ensure:

  • Async logging is enabled
  • Appropriate notification channels are active
  • Sampling rate is configured correctly
  • Database settings match infrastructure

3. Troubleshoot Notification Issues

Scenario: Slack notifications aren’t arriving.

Solution: Check the “Notification Channels” section (Section 3) to verify:

  1. Slack Notifications shows “Enabled”
  2. Webhook URL is present and partially visible (matches your configured webhook)
  3. Email also shows recipients if configured

4. Review Data Retention Policy

Scenario: Database growing too large, want to check retention settings.

Solution: Check “Core Features” section for “Data Retention” setting. If it’s 90 days and you want less, update initializer to 30 days.

5. Verify Advanced Analytics Features

Scenario: Correlation analysis isn’t showing data.

Solution: Check the “Advanced Analytics Features” section (Section 4) - if “Error Correlation” shows “Disabled”, enable it in the initializer.

Important Notes

Read-Only View

The Settings page is read-only. To change settings:

  1. Edit config/initializers/rails_error_dashboard.rb
  2. Restart your Rails server
  3. Refresh the Settings page to see updated values

Example:

# config/initializers/rails_error_dashboard.rb
RailsErrorDashboard.configure do |config|
  config.enable_baseline_alerts = true  # Change this
end

After restarting, Settings page will show:

Baseline Alerts                  ✓ Enabled (2.0 std devs)

Security Considerations

Masked Sensitive Data:

  • Webhook URLs show only protocol and last 4 characters
  • API keys show only last 4 characters
  • Passwords are never displayed

Access Control:

  • Settings page requires authentication (HTTP Basic Auth or custom authenticate_with lambda)
  • No API endpoint for programmatic access (security by design)
  • Only accessible to authenticated dashboard users

Configuration Validation

The Settings page shows current active configuration, not what’s in the file. This is useful for:

  1. Environment Variable Overrides: If ENV vars override initializer, Settings shows actual active value
  2. Default Values: Shows what defaults are being used when not explicitly configured
  3. Feature Detection: Confirms which optional features are actually loaded

Example: If your initializer has:

config.slack_webhook_url = ENV["SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL"]

Settings page will show:

  • “Not configured” if SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL is not set
  • Masked webhook URL if the environment variable is present

Troubleshooting

Settings Page Shows Different Values Than Initializer

Cause: Environment variables might be overriding initializer values.

Solution: Check for ENV var usage in initializer:

# This will use ENV var if present, initializer value as fallback
config.option = ENV.fetch("OPTION", "default_value")

Run echo $OPTION in your shell to see actual environment value.

Feature Shows “Enabled” But Not Working

Possible Causes:

  1. Background Jobs Not Running:
    • Async logging enabled but Sidekiq/Solid Queue not running
    • Check: ps aux | grep sidekiq
  2. Missing Dependencies:
    • Notification channel enabled but webhook URL not configured
    • Check: Settings page shows “Not configured” for webhook
  3. Insufficient Data:
    • Advanced analytics enabled but minimum data not available yet
    • Check: Analytics pages for “Insufficient data” messages

Cannot Access Settings Page

Problem: 401 Unauthorized or 403 Forbidden.

Solution for HTTP Basic Auth (401):

  1. Verify credentials in initializer match what you’re entering
  2. Check for browser cached credentials (clear browser cache)
  3. Try incognito/private browsing window
  4. Verify dashboard_username and dashboard_password are set

Solution for custom auth (403):

  1. Verify your authenticate_with lambda returns truthy for authorized users
  2. Check logs for [RailsErrorDashboard] authenticate_with lambda raised — this means the lambda is erroring
  3. Use warden instead of current_user — Devise helpers are not available in the engine controller (see Custom Authentication)

From the Settings page, you can:

  • Back to Dashboard: Click “Back to Dashboard” button
  • Main navigation: Use navbar to access other sections
  • Direct links: Settings page has no direct links to other pages (read-only view)

API Access

Note: There is no API endpoint for accessing settings programmatically. This is intentional for security reasons.

Alternative: If you need programmatic access to configuration:

# In Rails console or application code
config = RailsErrorDashboard.configuration
config.async_logging  # => true
config.retention_days  # => 90

Pro Tip: Bookmark the Settings page URL (/error_dashboard/settings) for quick configuration verification during deployments.