Use Loom to capture and share error logs for faster issue resolution
Key takeaways
- Error logs play a vital role in helping teams identify, diagnose, and resolve technical issues before they affect performance, uptime, or the user experience
- Recording a technical issue with a screen recording tool lets you show visual context alongside the relevant text logs
- Video-based error reporting helps teams show an issue, explain what happened, and document the fix
- Loom helps teams record, edit, and share issue walkthroughs so everyone has the context they need to troubleshoot faster
Text logs are useful, but they don’t always tell the full story. When teams can see what happened on screen, what steps triggered the issue, and which system messages appeared in real time, they have more context to troubleshoot quickly.
Using Loom to record technical issues makes error reporting easier to understand and easier to act on. Instead of sending screenshots, copied log lines, and lengthy written explanations separately, teams can capture the issue, walk through the steps, and share relevant logs in a single video.
This makes Loom especially useful for engineering teams, customer support escalations, production troubleshooting, and post-incident documentation.
What are error logs?
Error logs are records of system events that help teams identify, diagnose, and resolve technical issues. IT teams use these logs to identify what caused a particular issue and when that issue occurred, with key details like error messages and timestamps providing important context clues.
Incomplete or unclear error logs can slow down troubleshooting and delay error resolution.
How to capture and share error logs using Loom
Loom lets teams record technical issues, helping them combine visual context with relevant logs, dashboards, and system messages. Instead of relying on written descriptions alone, teams can see how the issue happened, what appeared on screen, and which steps led to the error.
This can make bug reports, escalations, and incident reviews easier to understand and faster to act on.
Step 1. Identify and reproduce the issue
Before recording a walkthrough, confirm the exact issue you want to capture. Follow the same steps that led to the problem and note the environment, user actions, and conditions that triggered it.
The goal is to ensure the issue can be reproduced consistently before you record it. Some bugs only appear under specific conditions, so details like browser, device, user role, account settings, or timing may be important.
Step 2. Prepare relevant logs and technical context
Next, open developer tools, monitoring dashboards, or system logs that show the error. Look for the timestamp that matches the exact time that the error occurred. Make a note of any error messages and codes that might provide details about the error.
You should also review what happens immediately before and after the error to gather more context.
Step 3. Record a walkthrough of the issue with Loom
Once you’ve reproduced the issue and opened the relevant logs, use Loom’s screen recorder to record a clear walkthrough.
While you’re recording, narrate the expected behavior and clearly explain where the issue occurs. Highlighting the issue clearly can help IT or engineering teams reproduce it and investigate the cause. You can also use Loom to record a voiceover after you’ve finished capturing the issue.
Step 4. Highlight error messages and system responses
During the recording, draw attention to the specific messages, alerts, failed requests, or unexpected behavior that may help explain the issue. This helps viewers connect what they’re seeing on screen with the technical details in the logs.
Don’t just show that an error occurred. Explain how it affects the user experience, what workflow it interrupts, and why it needs attention. That added context can help teams prioritize the issue and decide what to investigate first.
Step 5. Share the Loom recording with stakeholders
After you’re finished recording a video with Loom, it’s automatically uploaded to your Loom account. Loom also creates a shareable link you can send to stakeholders.
You can share your Loom recording with stakeholders through the collaboration apps you’re already using, such as Jira, Confluence, or Slack. Send the recording to engineers, product managers, or support teams. Sharing Loom recordings across engineering and support teams can make cross-functional collaboration easier.
Use Loom’s sharing settings to make sure the right stakeholders can view and comment on the recording.
Step 6. Document outcomes and store recordings for future reference
After the issue is resolved, keep the Loom recording with the rest of your incident documentation. This creates a clearer record of what happened, how the issue appeared, and what steps helped the team resolve it.
These recordings can also support post-incident reviews, onboarding, and future troubleshooting. With Loom’s video library, teams can organize recordings by project, incident type, date, or system so they’re easier to find later.
Common scenarios where Loom improves error log workflows
Combining Loom video recordings with system logs and dashboards can help improve error log workflows and boost developer productivity. Video-based error documentation is important across multiple technical workflows, from engineering teams to customer support escalation.
Bug reporting in engineering teams
Using Loom for bug reporting gives developers a clear view of the environment, steps, and conditions surrounding an issue.
Loom is also helpful because it provides additional context surrounding the error. With Loom, you can capture console messages, alerts, and failures as they happen, giving developers more context for debugging.
Incident response and production troubleshooting
Performance issues and downtime can affect revenue, productivity, and customer trust. Pairing Loom with error logs can help teams respond faster.
When teams have visual context surrounding an issue, it’s easier to diagnose that issue in the event of an outage or performance issue. As a result, you can restore systems faster and minimize the impact of downtime.
Customer support escalation
Customer support teams act as a liaison between users who are experiencing issues and engineering teams who can fix those issues. When customer support teams receive reports of technical issues, they have to escalate and explain them to engineering teams.
Using Loom for customer support escalation allows customer support teams to clearly communicate and showcase issues with visual context, making it easier for engineering teams to understand the issue and what might be causing it.
Post-incident learning and documentation
When you use Loom for error logs, every recording is automatically uploaded and stored in your Loom account. You can create folders to organize these recordings by category, month, year, or any other criteria that makes them easy to locate.
Since Loom stores all your previous error log videos, you have a repository of knowledge you can use to prevent similar issues in the future and resolve them quickly if they do occur. This institutional knowledge base can also help with onboarding.
Tips for capturing clear and useful error log recordings
Loom recordings are most helpful when they’re focused, easy to follow, and supported by the right technical context.
- Keep recordings focused: Error log recordings should be exclusively focused on the error that’s being reported. Avoid unnecessary details to keep recordings short and focused.
- Narrate clearly: Clearly narrate what’s happening on your screen as it occurs to help viewers understand your precise steps and exactly when the error occurs.
- Ensure logs are visible: Make sure error logs are visible during the recording to show what’s logged when the error occurs.
- Edit for conciseness: Use Loom’s built-in editor to remove any unnecessary or repetitive parts to keep recordings as concise as possible.
- Standardize documentation practices: Use standard software documentation processes for consistency and efficiency, ensuring error log recordings and reports are easy to quickly read.
Improve debugging workflows with Loom
Loom can make debugging easier by pairing technical data with visual context, helping teams troubleshoot faster and reduce downtime. Integrating video-based documentation into your troubleshooting processes also helps you optimize debugging workflows.
With Loom, you can record, edit, and share videos with a single tool. Loom AI can instantly enhance your videos and transform them into documents, and the Loom library makes it easy to keep recordings organized for later viewing. Try Loom for free to discover how you can simplify error reporting and debugging.