Pulse - Session Context repurposed

Pulse Pulse Questions
1

Hi,

While I’m building reports using the pulse-tm1-session-history-* index what I’m noticing (in two different clients with several hundred users) is that the Context is empty a lot (55% in one client 89% in another).

select
ServiceName,
DisplayName,
IsAdmin,
LogInTime,
LogOutTime,
SessionTime,
CommittingCount,
RunningCount,
WaitingCount,
RollingBackCount,
UserWaitingCount,
LogCount,
Product,
Context,
Name,
ThreadId,
Id,
timestamp
from
pulse-tm1-session-history-2025
where
DisplayName = 'Blalx012'
and timestamp BETWEEN '2025-09-12 17:20:00' AND '2025-09-12 23:59:00'
order by timestamp desc

CleanShot 2025-10-03 at 13.03.12@2x
CleanShot 2025-10-03 at 13.03.12@2x4726×1342 464 KB

This pattern repeats a lot, one session has a Context but a new one which start before the prior one ends, has no Context.

Then I started looking at the pulse-server-state-* index to see what was happening:

select
DISTINCT(SessionId),
Context
from
pulse-server-state-2025-09
where
DisplayName = 'Blalx012'
and timestamp BETWEEN '2025-09-12 17:20:00' AND '2025-09-12 23:59:00'
order by timestamp desc

CleanShot 2025-10-03 at 13.05.42@2x
CleanShot 2025-10-03 at 13.05.42@2x2894×500 44.4 KB

So it seems that during the same time period only 3 sessions were created by that user but the sessions got “re-contexted” to another client by updating the session header. I’m assuming this happens when PAFE and PAW share the session cookie, but I have no idea.

That aside, it does not seem that Pulse can deal with this when it comes to registering these events in the ‘pulse-tm1-session-history-*’ index as it creates a new document per changed context.

What are your thoughts?

Cheers!

nico

2

Hi @nbisurgi ,

Which version of Pulse is it and are you referring to the new feature added into Pulse for 7.1.0 about Excel usage monitoring?

Cheers,

Paul

3

Hi Paul,

I see this in two clients with different setup:

  1. Has TM1 OnPrem + Pulse 6.6.0
  2. Has PAoC + Pulse 7.0.0

The original screenshots belong to the first one. On the second one I see this happening less frequently but there are still multiple sessions with empty context. Below are some SQL + results:

Unique session from specific user on given time period:

On session-history index:

select
Distinct Id, Context
from
pulse-tm1-session-history-2025
where
DisplayName = 'XBBJ6VM'
and timestamp BETWEEN '2025-10-02 10:23:00' AND '2025-10-02 23:59:00'
order by timestamp desc

Returned: 26 records

CleanShot 2025-10-06 at 10.40.55@2x
CleanShot 2025-10-06 at 10.40.55@2x4236×2224 334 KB

On server-state index:

select
Distinct SessionId, Context
from 
pulse-server-state-2025-10
where
DisplayName = 'XBBJ6VM'
and timestamp BETWEEN '2025-10-02 10:23:00' AND '2025-10-02 23:59:00'
order by timestamp desc

Returned: 18 records

CleanShot 2025-10-06 at 10.41.22@2x
CleanShot 2025-10-06 at 10.41.22@2x4148×1612 350 KB

The pulse-tm1-session-history-* has no SessionId but it does have an Id field; though the numbers don’t match conceptually they should be the same, right?

4

Pulse is only storing the information coming from TM1 sessions. To better understand why many sessions have no context, you could try reaching out to IBM or directly to Hubert.

The Context field is populated by the tool the user is using. Another reason why the Context field is empty is that they might be using other REST API tools that are not sending the Context information to TM1.

If you’re trying to reconcile the pulse-server-state and pulse-tm1-session indices, then it won’t work. The pulse-server-state index stores all sessions, whereas the pulse-tm1-session index only stores sessions with a duration of 60 seconds or more.