Logs are always important if you’re supporting systems. The SQL Server Agent has always been a heavily used tool in my experience, so writing execution trace messages to the logs might help investigate an issue one day.

This guide follows the Microsoft Docs page – Write Execution Trace Messages to the SQL Server Agent Error Log

This option comes with the following warning:

Because this option can cause the error log to become large, only include execution trace messages in SQL Server Agent error logs when investigating a specific SQL Server Agent problem.

I’ve never enabled this before and discovered the option today. It does appear to make a big difference in the volume of Error Logs.

Write Execution Trace Messages to the SQL Agent Error Log

1. Right-click SQL Server Agent within the SSMS Object Explorer.

2. Enable the ‘Include execution trace messages’ box.