How to create a custom Windows Event Log view and email trigger

The filtering on Windows event logs can be slow, clunky and although you can do it on fields like event ID, it seems that many event IDs are shared amongst many different errors – the event ID may match but the body of the error (therefore the actual error) may be completely unrelated. Fortunately, it is possible to filter on the contents of the body of the error message but it requires creating a custom XML query. Also, it would be handy to send out a notification email when this event gets logged. Read on to find out how to work this magic….

This example is looking for a Warning event 1309 for ASP.NET 4.0.30319.0 on a web server. If you were to just filter the log on the criteria above today it would return 435 results because it is a fairly general error ID. If I filter it using XML for SqlException (what I’m really interested in) only 5 results are returned.

So the first step is go to the Application Log and choose Create Custom View… Select the XML tab, check Edit query manually and click Yes.

And edit the XML query, in this case we have added the line in bold below:

<QueryList>

  <Query Id="0" Path="Application">

    <Select Path="Application">

    *[EventData[Data and (Data='SqlException')]]

    </Select>

  </Query>

</QueryList>

Click OK, give the custom view a name (and folder if required) and click OK:

This will create a new folder with your custom view, select it and you will see it filter the results nice and quickly.

Send an email when an event is logged

Give it a name:

Click Next:

On Windows 2012R2 Send an e-mail (deprecated) doesn’t appear to work. Instead we will use a PowerShell script to send an email. Click Next.

Fill in the dialog as below with the path to your PowerShell script, in this case "C:\Scripts\SendEvtEmail.ps1"

This task is now save in Task Scheduler and can be further edited or delete from there. 

PowerShell script

Amend the script to suit your purposes:

# -------------------------------------

# Check Eventlog for a SqlException Message and send an email

if one is logged

#

# Paul Hewson 10/03/2017 v1.0

#

# This script is called every time an entry with an EventID of 1309 is generated

# -------------------------------------

#

# For testing try this:

# Write-EventLog –LogName Application –Source "ASP.NET 4.0.30319.0" –EntryType Warning –EventID 1309 –Message "SqlException"

# Get the latest log entry

$newEvent = Get-EventLog -Newest 1 -LogName "Application"

# If the newest log entry contains the text SqlException, fire off an email

if ($newEvent.Message -like"*SqlException*")

{   

    $EmailBody= $newEvent| Format-List| Out-String

    $EmailFrom = "computer@company.com"

    $EmailTo = "admin@company.com", "user@company.com"

    $EmailSubject = "New Eventlog SqlException on Web Server"

    $SMTPServer = "SMTPSERVER"

    Send-MailMessage -From $EmailFrom -To $EmailTo -Subject $EmailSubject -body $EmailBody -SmtpServer $SMTPServer -Priority High

}