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.

The Studies workspace. Where your SyRF deployment has the new Studies workspace switched on, this history is the Activity sheet instead of a page. See Activity below. The rest of this page describes Processing, which is what you see while the workspace is off.

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

Processing Activity

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, 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 and progress	The same status wording used everywhere else in SyRF, one chip covering both status and progress. A progress bar appears within it only when SyRF can count real work done; otherwise the bar’s label reads “Progress not yet measurable” rather than guessing.
Updated	When the operation last changed.
Started by	Who started it. Not shown for search imports, which do not record who started them. For the other kinds it reads “Not available” when SyRF has no name for that operation.

Rows are grouped, most urgent first:

Needs attention — something went wrong, or the operation is waiting on someone. A failed bulk PDF upload leaves this group once a later upload for the same search has completed, or once its retry window has passed. It moves to Completed and other outcomes but is still listed as failed.
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. As the window narrows, the table’s columns compress to fit rather than scrolling sideways; below about 905 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. When nothing is running and nothing needs attention, Processing shows the latest completed results instead, under the line “Nothing running. These are the latest results.” Once you choose a filter yourself, Processing keeps to it.

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;
when the operation was created, last updated and completed, in your local time with a labelled UTC offset (for example, 25th Sep 2026, 16:23 UTC+01:00) — the same form the Searches page and the upload panels use. Not available means the server did not supply that time; bulk PDF uploads, for example, record no separate update time;
who started it (not shown for search imports);
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.

For a bulk PDF upload, the detail panel also offers Open upload. It is a link, not an action: it takes you to the Searches page with that search’s upload details expanded, where you can follow progress, cancel the upload or retry it. It appears only when you can open the Searches page and use bulk PDF upload there.

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. Older operations may have been pruned, and the page names the limit rather than only gesturing at it: for bulk PDF uploads, the server keeps the latest 20 per search and 100 per project, and it never prunes one that is still running or has expired. Other operation families follow their own server retention rules. 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 — Open upload in the row detail takes you there;
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.

Activity in the Studies workspace

With the Studies workspace switched on, the same history opens as a sheet beside your studies rather than as a page of its own.

Who has it. Activity is there if you can work with searches, PDF uploads or bulk study updates in the project. Reviewers who only review studies don’t see it.
Opening it. Select Activity at the top of Studies. When something needs you, the button shows how many things, and a screen reader hears it too (“Activity, 2 need attention”). On a phone, Activity is under More actions, with the same count. An old link to Processing opens Studies with the sheet already open, and a View in Processing link from Searches opens it on that operation, outlined, with a note saying why.
What it shows. The sheet is titled Activity: imports, PDF uploads and bulk study updates in this project, newest first. They’re grouped as on Processing, under shorter names: Needs attention, Running and History. Each one names what ran (“PDF upload · PubMed, May 2026 · Stopped”), its status in the same words as everywhere else, what it did, and when and by whom it was started. Search imports don’t record when they started, so theirs shows when they last changed, marked Updated. History shows 25 at a time, with Show more.
When nothing is happening. With nothing running and nothing needing attention, the sheet starts with the latest result (“Nothing running. Latest: …”). If nothing you can see has run at all, it says Nothing has run that you can see yet.
What you can do from it. The same links as on Processing, and only the ones you can use: Open upload takes you to that search’s upload on Searches, where you can retry or cancel it; Open search and View studies take you to the page an operation belongs to; and Report downloads a PDF upload’s report. Like Processing, the sheet never retries or cancels anything itself.
Closing it. Select Close, press Escape, or select outside the sheet. You return to the button you opened it from. The sheet stays open while you page or filter the study list underneath it.

You see the same operations here as on Processing: only those for the parts of the project you have access to.