Screensavers are not showing

Problem: DeskAlerts screensavers are not being displayed

If you’ve sent a DeskAlerts screensaver to a workstation with the DeskAlerts client application installed but it is not showing up, there are few steps you can take to provide a more detailed report to DeskAlerts support and speed up this incident resolution.

Step 1. Check if usual pop-up alerts are being delivered

First of all, try sending a usual pop-up alert to the same user/workstation. If it is not being delivered either, the problem is not limited to screensavers and is most likely a higher-level connectivity issue.

Report this to DeskAlerts support or follow the “No content is being delivered” diagnostic manual.

If usual pop-up alerts are arriving normally, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2. Check the client application History records

If you’re seeing a green DeskAlerts agent icon in the system tray, click on it to expand the application menu. Click on History item here and check whether there’s a record for your test screensaver. If there is a record for your screensaver, proceed to step 3. If the screensaver is not reflected in History, proceed to Step 4.
If you don’t see a tray icon or don’t have History item in the menu – your DeskAlerts client application was built without these features. You can still get this information to DA support by retrieving the history file itself, which is located at %programdata%\DeskAlerts\ALERTS00001\your_usersname\db.dat. Proceed with Step 3.

Step 3. Check the Windows screensaver settings

Go to the Windows Screensaver settings and see if the current system screensaver is set to DeskAlerts Screensaver. If it is – click on “Preview” to verify whether it is displaying intended content. If it is not set to DeskAlerts screensaver – try changing a screensaver manually to any available option.

If you’re not able to do this – your screensaver is currently being enforced by the company group policies.

This rule must be turned off in order for DeskAlerts screensavers to work. The group policies are managed by your local system administrator. If you’re able to change the screensaver manually, there might be an issue with your client application. Proceed to step 4.

Step 4. Report your findings to DeskAlerts support

Please submit as many items from the following list to DeskAlerts support as you can so they can better determine the source of the issue:

1. What kind of screensaver are you sending – image-based, video-based or custom made HTML?
2. Are the usual pop-up alerts arriving normally?
3. Can you see the screensaver record in History? If you don’t have access to History, send over the file mentioned in Step 2.
4. Can you see DeskAlerts screensaver in Windows settings?
5. Can you change your own screensaver without using admin rights?
6. Send over the file located in DeskAlerts folder in program files x86, named conf.xml – this is a client application configuration file
7. If you have admin access to the application server running DeskAlerts or your own machine, you can also recover the logs in accordance with steps 5 and/or 6.

Step 5 (Advanced) – Retrieving the server logs

This step can only be taken by the person with access to DeskAlerts application server (IIS). In order to provide a detailed report to DA Support team, ideally, you will need to gather three log types.

The IIS log for the day when the issue has occurred – the location of these can be determined from IIS Manager, the “Logging” feature of the site running DeskAlerts. By default, these are located at C:\inetpub\logs\.

The system log for the day when the issue has occurred – you can generate one by going to Event Viewer → Windows logs → Application and exporting all “warning” and “error” level events for the needed day.

The DeskAlerts own error log, which will be located at %deskalerts application root%\admin\logs.
There may be several files here – just copy the ones for the day when the error has occurred.

Step 6 (Advanced) – Retrieving the client-side logs

To perform this step, you must have the rights to install applications on the workstation where the issue occurs, and the system client-server communication has to be done via HTTP, not HTTPS (you can tell from the server URL retrieved at Step 1).

1. Make sure that the client application is running (deskalerts.exe in the list of processes)
2. Download and install Telerik Fiddler web debugging application.3
3. Run Telerik Fiddler so it will start tracing all outgoing web communication from the
   workstation.
4. Send a test screensaver to this employee workstations
5. Wait for 3-5 minutes with Fiddler still recording the client-server communication
6. Save all recorded web sessions into .saz file using File → Save → All Sessions…

Send the resulting file to DeskAlerts support with the description of other steps taken.

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