Processing Activity
Availability. Processing activity appears only when your SyRF deployment has the Study management processing feature switched on. If you cannot see Processing in the Study management section of the project menu, the feature is not enabled for you yet, and nothing about your existing pages has changed.
Processing shows the operation history the server currently retains for your project: search imports, bulk study updates, and bulk PDF uploads. It is a read-only view, not a permanent or exhaustive audit log. You start work from the page that owns it — a search import or a bulk PDF upload from Searches, a bulk study update from the study Library — and you come to Processing to see how it went.
Contents
What you see
Each operation appears as a row with:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Type | Which kind of operation it is (search import, bulk study update, bulk PDF upload). |
| Operation | Its name, plus the page that owns it. That is a link when you have access to that page, and plain text when you do not. |
| Status | The same status wording used everywhere else in SyRF. |
| Progress | A progress bar only when SyRF can count real work done. Otherwise it says “Progress not yet measurable” rather than guessing. |
| Updated | When the operation last changed. |
| Started by | Who started it, or “Not available” when SyRF does not record that for this kind of operation. |
Rows are grouped, most urgent first:
- Needs attention — something went wrong, or the operation is waiting on someone.
- Active — queued or running right now.
- Completed and other outcomes — finished, stopped, or in a state SyRF does not recognise.
Each group heading carries a count, and each group can be scrolled sideways on a narrow screen. Below about 600 pixels wide, rows become cards instead.
The default filter
Processing opens on Active and needs attention, because that is what you almost always want: the things still moving and the things that need you.
The result count above the list tells you two different numbers, and never confuses them: how many rows are on screen right now, and how many operations match your filters. With 250 matching operations and one page rendered it reads “Showing 25 of 250 operations” — use Show more to render the rest.
To see history, choose All operations. You can also narrow by operation type or by group using the filter buttons. Whenever you have changed the filters — or you arrived through a link that revealed one particular operation — a Reset filters button appears. It puts the filters back and clears the revealed operation, so it always changes something.
Finding a completed operation
Two ways:
- Choose All operations, then use the type filters to narrow the list. Long groups show 25 rows at a time with a Show more button that tells you how many are left.
- Follow a View in Processing link from the Library or Searches page. That link always reveals the operation it points at — even a completed one that the default filter would normally hide, and even one that would otherwise sit past the first page of its group. When it does, a notice says so and offers Clear to return to the default view. If the operation has since been removed, the notice says that instead of showing you an empty list — including when the project has no visible operations at all.
Seeing the details
Select the arrow at the end of a row to expand it. The detail panel shows:
- the exact status SyRF recorded, including its raw name and number — useful when contacting support;
- full timestamps in UTC for when the operation was created, last updated and completed;
- who started it;
- the job ID, with a Copy button. It says Copied only when the copy actually happened; if your browser does not allow SyRF to use the clipboard it says so instead of pretending; and
- any retained errors and warnings. Long error lists show the first 10 and distinguish the total error count from the detailed rows the server retained, with a Show all button for those retained rows.
While a row is open, the list stops re-ordering itself so the row you are reading cannot jump away from you. A short message says so. Close the row and normal ordering resumes.
If the operation you have open finishes while you are reading it, it stays in the same position and group until you close it. This preserves your reading position. After you close it, normal grouping and ordering resume; choose All operations to find it in the completed history.
Retained history
Processing reports only the operations the server still holds. Bulk PDF upload history is capped at the latest 20 operations per search and 100 per project. Other operation families follow their server retention rules, so older entries may be pruned. The counts on this page describe the retained operations available now; they never claim to cover every operation ever run.
What you cannot do here
Processing never offers Cancel or Retry. Actions live with the object they affect:
- cancel a bulk PDF upload on the Searches page;
- start a new bulk study update from the study Library.
This keeps a read-only history read-only, so nothing you do while reviewing can change what happened.
When live updates stop
Processing updates itself as operations progress. If SyRF loses its live connection to the server, a notice says Reconnecting and the rows you can see are held as they were: they are no longer being updated and may be out of date. They start moving again on their own once the connection comes back.
What you can see
You only ever see operations for the parts of the project you have access to. If you see “No operations visible to you”, either nothing has run yet or the operations that have run belong to parts of the project you cannot see.