1. Administering Oracle Content Management
  2. Manage Oracle Content Management in Legacy Environments
  3. Deploy and Manage Oracle Content Management with a Non-Metered Subscription
  4. Manage and Monitor Oracle Content Management with a Non-Metered Subscription
  5. Understand Visitor Sessions

Understand Visitor Sessions

A visitor session is metric used by Oracle Content Management to track usage during a specified session window (one hour for hourly visitor sessions and 24 hours for daily visitor sessions). A visitor session is triggered when a unique unauthenticated user or an authenticated user who has the site visitor role accesses the service using a specific channel (for example, via a browser, mobile browser or applink, etc.). Access from multiple channels counts as multiple visitor sessions. For example, if one user in a 24 hour period accesses the same Oracle Content Management instance from a Firefox desktop web browser, a Chrome desktop web browser, and a mobile web browser, that would count as a total of three daily visitor sessions.

Unauthenticated users can access certain sites, use public links, and view Oracle Content Management content embedded in apps or websites.

Frequently Asked Questions

If a user accesses multiple pages within the same Oracle Content Management instance, does that count as multiple visitor sessions?

No. Visitor sessions are only counted at the instance (site) level.

When is a visitor session triggered?

A visitor session is initiated by any user (anonymous or authenticated guest) who accesses an Oracle Content Management resource such an Oracle Content Management instance, a site created with Oracle Content Management, or via an API (for example, using applinks) at least once during the session window.

How long does a visitor session last?

The duration of an hourly visitor session is one hour; a daily visitor session is 24 hours. It starts the first time the user accesses a specific Oracle Content Management resource via a unique channel. After one hour, subsequent visits by the same user to the same resource triggers another hourly visitor session. After 24 hours, subsequent visits by the same user to the same resource triggers another daily visitor session.

Will an Oracle Content Management standard or enterprise user be counted in visitor session counts?

No. An authenticated (signed-in) standard or enterprise user that visits an Oracle Content Management resource isn’t included in visitor session counts.

Does the visitor session apply to authenticated (signed-in) users visiting an Oracle Content Management resource?

As stated above an authenticated Oracle Content Management standard or enterprise user that visits an Oracle Content Management resource will not be counted in visitor session counts. However, an authenticated user with the site visitor role will be counted in the visitor session counts.

How often is the visitor session calculated?

The visitor might access the same resource (site, API or applink) multiple times in the visitor session window (one hour for hourly visitor sessions and 24 hours for daily visitor sessions), but will be counted as one/single visit. If the user accesses the same resource again after the visitor session window, it will be counted as new visit.

Does a user visiting a second site count as a second visitor session?

The same user accessing a different resource (such as a different site) will be counted as a separate visitor session visit. For example, the same user accessing two different sites within the session window will be counted as two visits. Essentially the count is per user, per resource, per channel, per visitor session window for a given service instance.

Will visits to a site by bots or crawlers count as visitor sessions?

Repeated visits from bots or crawlers will not be counted as visitor sessions.

Will a user accessing a public download link be counted as visitor session?

A user accessing a public download link to download a document will not be counted as a visitor session. Even if the user is brought to the Oracle Content Management user interface, showing the Download button, it won’t count as a visitor session.

What if the public download link is accessed via a site created with Oracle Content Management? Will using the link be counted as visitor session?

Visiting the site created with Oracle Content Management triggers a visitor session, so it will count as a visitor session, but not due to using the public download link.

For a browser session, how are the visitor sessions tracked?

The visitor sessions for a browser are tracked by placing a cookie that expires after the session window ends in the browser session.

What happens if a user clears his cookies in his browser or closes an incognito browser session?

If the user clears the cookie (by clearing in browser or closing an incognito window), the next request will be treated as a new user and count as a new visitor session.

What metrics are reported to administrators?

Oracle Content Management Analytics provides the following metrics:

  • Break down of visitor session counts on hourly basis
  • Aggregation of visitor session counts per month
  • Ability to drill down on each day of the month (to get to visitor counts)

What metrics are not currently supported or captured?

  • Cookie disabling: Some customers can disable cookie tracking on the browser side as an end user policy. In such cases, Oracle Content Management can’t track the visitor based cookies since they are turned off, meaning the count will be lower than the actual number of visitors.
  • Tracking visitors via the Oracle Content Management desktop application (the desktop application currently supports counting only named users).
  • Tracking visits via the Oracle Content Management mobile applications (the mobile applications currently support counting only named users).

What about opt-out or privacy support with regards to cookie tracking?

Oracle Content Management sites will provide a standard option of letting the user know that a Oracle Content Management resource (site) is using cookies and users can opt-out by disabling the cookie. To support this, the following two items are added consistently across all the Oracle Content Management site resources:

  • Opt-out summary message: This message appears on each site to indicate that a cookie is being used for tracking. It includes a link to the privacy page.
  • Privacy site page: A standard sites page explaining the usage of a cookie as well the steps to disable the cookie. You can customize this page like any other sites page.

Are AppLinks and API calls tracked as visitor sessions?

AppLinks and REST API calls from third-party applications are included in the visitor sessions counts.

How are AppLink calls tracked as visitor sessions?

The assignedUser parameter in the AppLink request body is used to track the client-side invocations associated to unique users.

Examples

Here are some examples of visitor session counts. Let’s assume ACME Corporation has an Oracle Content Management service instance and has created three sites: SiteA, SiteB, and SiteC. Following are examples of how the visitor sessions would be counted during a session window.

Visitor Resource (Site) Daily Visitor Session Counts
User1 https://docs-acme.sites.us2.oracecloud/authsite/SiteA Count increases to 1 (cookie1, user visits a site—SiteA, using Firefox)
User1 https://docs-acme.sites.us2.oracecloud/authsite/SiteB Count increases to 2 (cookie2, same user but different site—SiteB, using Firefox)
User2 https://mysite.acme.example.com (vanity URL for SiteC) Count increases to 3 (cookie3, different user, different site—SiteC, using Firefox)
User3 https://mysite.acme.example.com (vanity URL for SiteC) Count increases to 4 (cookie4, different user, same site—SiteC, using Firefox)
User2 https://mysite.acme.example.com (vanity URL for SiteC) Count stays at 4 (no change, cookie3, same user—User2, same site—SiteC, using Firefox, same session window)
User2 https://mysite.acme.example.com (vanity URL for SiteC) Count increases to 5 (cookie5, same user—User2, same site—SiteC, same session window, but using Chrome)