File Watcher Dashboard

Monitor and manage the file watchers that connect Prima to your imaging hardware.

What is the File Watcher Dashboard?

Prima monitors shared network folders for files produced by your slide imagers and auto-embedders. When a slide imager renames or associates an image, or when an auto-embedder exports a cassette event file, Prima detects the new file and automatically processes it. The File Watcher Dashboard lets you see whether these monitors are running correctly and restart them if they stop working.

Accessing the Dashboard

The dashboard is available from the main navigation bar. Any authenticated user can view the dashboard. To restart a watcher or edit folder settings, you need one of these roles: ControlPanel, Information Technology, or Lab Manager.

Understanding Watcher Status

Each watcher shows one of the following statuses:

Status	Badge	What it means
Not Configured	Not Configured	No folder path has been set for this watcher. Configure a folder in the Edit Folders dialog or in ControlPanel.
Healthy	Healthy	The watcher is running normally and monitoring its folder.
Degraded	Degraded	An error occurred but the watcher recovered automatically, or a recent health check found the folder temporarily inaccessible. It may resolve on its own within a few minutes.
Failed	Failed	The watcher has stopped and could not recover automatically. Use the Restart button to restart it.
Restarting	Restarting	A restart is in progress. The Restart button is temporarily disabled.

Auto-refresh: The dashboard updates automatically every 60 seconds. The "Last updated" timestamp at the top of the page shows when the most recent refresh occurred.

Restarting a Watcher

If a watcher shows Failed or Degraded, click the Restart button on that row. If the watcher is currently processing a file, it will finish that file first before restarting — no data will be lost. Any files in the folder that were waiting to be processed will be picked up automatically after the restart.

A confirmation dialog will appear before the restart proceeds, except when the status is Failed (in which case the restart happens immediately).

Editing Folder Settings

Click Edit Folders on any row to update the folder paths that Prima monitors. For slide imagers you can set:

Rename Folder — where the imager places images for Prima to rename
Association Folder — where the imager places images for Prima to associate with slides in the database
Minimum Log Level — controls how much detail is written to the log file in each folder

For auto-embedders you can set:

Event File Output Folder — where the embedder exports its CSV event files

These settings can also be configured in ControlPanel. Changes take effect immediately — there is no need to restart the service.

Common Issues

The watcher shows "Not Configured" but I have set the folder path

Save the folder settings in ControlPanel or using the Edit Folders button, then wait a moment. The watcher will be created and the status will update automatically. If it still shows Not Configured after a page refresh, verify that the path is saved correctly and that the Prima service has read access to the folder.

The watcher keeps going to "Degraded" or "Failed"

This usually means the watched folder is on a network share that is intermittently unavailable, or that permissions have changed. Check that:

The folder path exists and is accessible from the server running Prima
The Prima service account has read (and write, for association/rename) access to the folder
The network share is stable — high latency or frequent disconnections will cause failures

Files are not being processed even though the watcher is Healthy

The watcher monitors for new files. If files were placed in the folder while the watcher was stopped, they will be picked up on the next restart. You can trigger an immediate scan using the Process Association Folder or Process Rename Folder options in the Workstation application's slide imager context menu.