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Working with Analytics Reports

This chapter provides information on using and analyzing Analytics reports, creating portlets, and configuring the portal for most favorable tracking. It includes the following topics:

 

Overview of Analytics Reports

This section provides descriptions of the reports that are delivered with Analytics. For advanced tips and techniques on using Analytics reports, see Tips and Techniques - Using Analytics Reports.

The following table describes reports that are delivered with Analytics.

Table 3-1 Descriptions of Analytics Reports
Analytics Report
Description
Summary Metrics - Traffic
The Traffic console page displays metrics for many common events within the portal including community page views, My Pages views, search events, directory document views, Collaboration document views, content items views and directory views.
Summary Metrics - Pages
The Pages console page aggregates My Pages and community page views. The report displays the most visited pages (top pages), the least visited pages (bottom pages), the top entry pages and the top exit pages for the portal.
The data can be summed by hits (total number of page views) or users (unique number of users who viewed pages). Additionally, the report can be filtered to show only pages from specific communities. Finally, if My Page views are included in the report they are summarized so that every user's My Pages are counted as one page.
Summary Metrics - Users
The Users console page displays counts of total, added, inactive and active users.

Note: The Summary Metrics - Users report has been deprecated. You can continue to use the report in this release, but it will not be available in future releases. The Summary Metrics - Users report is disabled by default and can be enabled on the Runtime Settings page of the Analytics Administration Utility.

An inactive user is someone who has not logged in to the portal for a period that exceeds the active user timeout setting that you specify on the Runtime Settings page. An active user is someone who has logged in to the portal for a period of time that is within the active user timeout setting. For details on the Active User Timeout setting, see Configuring Runtime Settings.
Summary Metrics - Logins
The Logins console page displays counts of logins into the portal, even if users have Remember my password selected on their home page, thereby logging them in automatically. The data can be summed by Logins (total logins into the portal) or Users (unique users who logged into the portal).
Summary Metrics - Duration
The Duration console page shows the maximum and/or average duration of all portal visits.

Note: The Summary Metrics - Duration report has been deprecated. You can continue to use the report in this release, but it will not be available in future releases. The Summary Metrics - Duration report is disabled by default and can be enabled on the Runtime Settings page of the Analytics Administration Utility.

A portal visit starts when a user logs into the portal and ends when the user either logs out, logs in again or the Visit Timeout expires. The Visit Timeout is used instead of a session timeout because:
  • The session timeout may be set arbitrarily high for infrastructure reasons.
  • There may be a desire to end a portal visit after only a few minutes of inactivity.

    • For instance, it is safe to assume that the user is no longer “using” the portal after 3 minutes of inactivity. For this reason, a new visit will be tracked the next time that the user clicks on a link in the portal or refreshes the page.

The Visit Timeout can be set in the Analytics Administration utility. For details, see Configuring Runtime Settings.
Community Metrics - Traffic
The Community Traffic console page displays data for community page views. The report displays the most viewed communities (top communities), the least viewed communities (bottom communities), all communities (which is only available in tabular view) and selected communities.
The report data can be viewed by Hits (page views), Visits (consecutive page views within a single community) and Users (unique users who viewed pages within the selected communities).
Community Metrics - Response Time
The Response Time console page displays the length of time that has elapsed from when the portal server receives a request for a community page until the time the response is sent to the user. Because the tracking is done on the portal server, the length of time it takes for the response to reach the user's machine and be displayed on the browser is not included in this metric.
This report displays the communities with the fastest response time (top communities), the communities with the slowest response time (bottom communities), all communities (which is only available in tabular view) and selected communities. The report shows maximum, average and minimum response times.
Portlet Metrics - Usage
The Portlet Usage console page displays data about clicks within portlets. Analytics tracks user clicks on a gatewayed button or link within portlets.
The report displays the most used portlets (top portlets), the least used portlets (bottom portlets), all portlets (which is only available in tabular view), selected portlets and portlets within selected communities. The report data can be viewed by Activity (portlet clicks) and Users (unique users who used the selected portlets).
Portlet Metrics - Views
The Portlet Views console page tracks the number of times a portlet is displayed within the portal. That is, each time a page is viewed, all of the portlets on that page are counted as being viewed.
The report displays the most viewed portlets (top portlets), the least viewed portlets (bottom portlets), all portlets (which is only available in tabular view), selected portlets and portlets within selected communities. The report data can be viewed by Views and Users (unique users who viewed the selected portlets).
Portlet Metrics - Response Time
The Response Time console page displays the time from when the portal sends a request for a portlet until the time the remote server responds with the portlet content. This report is important because typically a community page response equals the response of the slowest portlet on that page. For this reason, when troubleshooting slow communities it is important to find the portlet with the slowest performance. The amount of time it takes for the response to reach the user's machine and be displayed on the browser is not included in this metric because the tracking occurs on the portal server.
This report displays the portlets with the fastest response time (top portlets), the portlets with the slowest response time (bottom portlets), all portlets (Note: This option is only available in tabular view), selected portlets and portlets within selected communities. The report shows maximum, average or minimum response time.
Other Metrics - Search
The Search console page tracks portal searches.
The report displays the top search terms. Additionally, for each search term the report displays the number of times the search was performed and abandoned. An abandoned search means that the user did not select any of the search results. Also, for each search term the report displays the documents that the user clicked on. Finally, the report can display searches that returned zero results.
For each search phrase, click the Details link to view the names of the documents that were opened in the search results.
Other Metrics - Documents
The Documents console page tracks knowledge directory document views. Document views include documents opened from the directory and search results page. Additionally, document views include documents opened from snapshot and link portlets, and custom portlets that include gatewayed document links.
The report displays the top documents viewed in the portal. Additionally, the report can be used to show the document views of all documents in a particular folder, or in a particular folder and its subfolders.
Other Metrics - Projects
The Projects console page displays metrics for AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration. The metrics include document views, new documents and discussion posts.
These three metrics can be used to report on the projects with the most traffic (top projects), projects with the least traffic (bottom projects), all projects (which is only available in tabular view) and selected projects.
Other Metrics - Content Items
The Content Items console page tracks AquaLogic Interaction Publisher content item views. A content item view refers to each time a user views a published content item from within a Publisher portlet.
The report displays the most viewed content items (top content items) and the least viewed content items (bottom content items). Additionally, the report can display content item views within a folder or within a folder and its subfolders. Finally, the report can group content item views by Publisher Explorer folders.
Ensemble Metrics - Resources
The Ensemble Resources console page displays data regarding Ensemble resource views. The report displays the most viewed resources (top resources), the least viewed resources (bottom resources), all resources (which is only available in tabular view) and selected resources.
The report data can be viewed by Hits (resource views), Visits (consecutive views within a single resource) and Users (unique users who performed views within the selected resources).

 

Accessing Analytics Reports

To access Analytics reports:

  1. Log in to the portal as an administrator.
    2. Note: If you are not an administrator, you must join the Analytics Console community in order to add it to your My Communities list.
  2. Choose My Communities | Analytics Console.

    3. The Analytics Console appears, as shown in the following figure.

    Figure 3-1 Analytics Console
    Analytics Console<img src=" id="wp1075607"/>

 

Managing Security for Analytics Reports

Analytics reports are intended to make usage metrics visible to a limited set of administrative users who perform particular business functions, such as capacity planning, QoS analysis, ROI analysis, “best bet” customization for Search, and so on.

The Analytics Console and portlet reports contain usage data that is valuable for enterprise portal analysis but might be regarded as private or sensitive to portal users. For example, the Search, Document, Community, and Portlet reports can be configured to display activity metrics for a particular user, based on several user properties such as E-mail Address, First Name, or Last Name.

To protect security and privacy interests before you roll out Analytics reports:

For information on creating administrative groups and managing user and guest access to portal objects, see Administrator Guide for BEA AquaLogic Interaction.

Note: Users should not add many Analytics portlets to a single My Page; each additional Analytics portlet slows down performance. If users experience unacceptable performance or timeouts, you can recommend that they include fewer Analytics portlets on each My Page.

 

Creating Analytics Portlets

You can use the Analytics portlet templates to create portlets that provide custom usage reports. For information on creating portlets from portlet templates, see Administrator Guide for BEA AquaLogic Interaction.

When you create portlets, be sure to consider security and privacy issues, described in Managing Security for Analytics Reports.

 

Working with Analytics - Advanced Tips and Techniques

This section provides advanced tips and techniques for using Analytics reports and maximizing portal usage tracking.

Tips and Techniques - Using Analytics Reports

The following table provides tips and techniques for how you can more effectively use Analytics reports to track activity and improve the performance of your portal.

Table 3-2 Tips and Techniques - Using Analytics Reports
Tip
Tip
Tip #1: Combine filtering and grouping when viewing reports

Combining filtering and grouping lets you utilize Analytics reports in some powerful ways. For example, you can view a breakdown of sales force activity by city, determine the most active city, then view the departments that are making that city so active. The following example provides steps that you might perform to make these determinations in a similar report of your own:

  1. Filter the report by the Department user property, which contains the Sales property value.
  2. Group the report by the City user property.

    3. The report displays a breakdown of sales force activity by city.

  3. Determine the most active city in the report.
  4. Filter the report by the most active city.
  5. Group the report by the Department user property.

    6. The report displays the departments that are making that city so active.

Tip #2: Use the Analytics Console as a portal “clean up” tool

Analyzing reports that track community, project and portlet usage can help you to improve the performance of your portal. You can use Analytics reports to:

  • Find the least-active communities and projects in your portal. Once you have done this, determine if these communities and projects are valuable. If they are not valuable, remove them from your portal.
  • Find the communities and portlets that have the slowest performance in your portal, and determine whether you should fix or remove these communities or portlets from your portal; then take appropriate action.

Tips and Techniques - Maximizing Portal Usage Tracking

The following table provides tips and techniques for what you can do within your portal to most effectively track usage.

Table 3-3 Tips and Techniques - Maximizing Usage Tracking
Tip
Description
Tip #1: Gateway links in portlets
Configuring your portlets to contain gatewayed links only improves the accuracy of the Portlet Metrics - Usage report.
Tip #2: Import user properties using a profile Web service
Importing user properties makes Analytics reports more powerful and compelling because you can cross-reference user profile data with tracked metrics. For example, if you import the Department and Region user properties, you can easily create reports such as Community Visits by Department and Logins by Region.
For details on importing user profile information with profile Web services, see Administrator Guide for BEA AquaLogic Interaction.


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