ThoughtFarmer EDC Service

The ThoughtFarmer EDC (Employee Directory Connector) Service runs alongside your ThoughtFarmer website and performs actions related to authentication and syncing.

NOTE: This troubleshooting guide only applies to installations utilizing on-premise Active Directory as the External user store. Cloud providers like Okta, Azure AD, and GSuite use a built-in service. For issues with that create a helpdesk ticket and our support team can assist further.

Troubleshooting ThoughtFarmer EDC Service issues

If the ThoughtFarmer EDC Service fails, stalls, or otherwise ends up in a corrupt state you may get reports that the Active Directory synchronization tasks (both scheduled and on-demand) are not happening. If this issue arises, or even before it is  reported, you may see a message in the Admin Panel "There are stale messages in the task queue tables. Please check that the ThoughtFarmer EDC service is running on the web server."

You can check the state of the service by logging onto the web server and going to Start > Administrative Tools > Services. There will be an entry for the ThoughtFarmer EDC Service with an indicator if it is started or not. If it is running then check the number of messages on the Task queue screen in the Administration Panel. Check the values in the Run date column. If the run time for a task has exceeded the threshold specified in the configuration setting messageQueue.stale.Message.Minutes (default: 90 minutes), you will see an error message. Certain service tasks such as indexing the portal, rebuilding extracted text, and any AD sync tasks may take up to 1 hour to perform. If a task takes much longer than an hour this is a cause for concern.

For more information on the "stale message in the task queue" error message, see the article There are stale tasks in the task queue on our ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk.

Restarting a stalled or failed service

Default installation configuration sets the ThoughtFarmer EDC Service to restart itself if it fails. So a restart should only be necessary on a stall, or if configuration has been changed.

Before actually restarting the service you may want to consider cleaning out the task queues first. This is a recommended first step if:

• It has been many days since the Service stopped working.
• There are thousands of messages in the queue.

Restart ThoughtFarmer EDC Service without queue cleanup

1. From the web server go to Start > Administrative Tools > Services.
2. Select the ThoughtFarmer EDC Service from the list.
3. Select "Restart the service" or "Start the service" depending on what is available.
4. Go to Admin panel: Advanced section > Task queue page to ensure messages are being processed. You should see messages disappear with each refresh.

If you think that you have a problem with the ThoughtFarmer EDC Service and are unsure how to troubleshoot or correct it we recommend that you contact support@thoughtfarmer.com so our support team can help diagnose and rectify the issue.