The SharePoint usage reports, once enabled, look extremely pretty, but are generally pretty meaningless unless you are dealing with absolutely huge numbers of hits, where averages and graphical representations are the only effective way of dealing with information. However, there are two report pages that are extremely useful, particularly for slightly smaller sites, that can’t be reached through the GUI interface in MOSS 2007. They are actually from the basic WSS system, and MOSS inexplicably misses out any direct reference though the administration pages.
| <url>/_layouts/usage.aspx | Text Mode Site Collection Usage Summary | The only report that shows total registered site collection users, and storage compared to quota. |
| <url>/_layouts/usageDetails.aspx | Text Mode Web Usage Details | The only built-in reports that can show a cross-tab of items by day. Monthly summary and daily views for each of several metrics. |
The second of these, usage details, is brilliant for tracking usage of a site, showing which users have accessed the site on which days over the last month. Its invaluable as a quick security check to make sure no unexpected users are accessing the site! The permissions system in SharePoint is pretty robust, especially if you’ve stuck to SharePoint and AD groups to assign rights, but its always possible for oddities to happen.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I can recommend MAPILab Statistics for SharePoint for tracking usage statistics of your SharePoint implementation. Integration with Active Directory, deeply detailed reports, reports on search, support of any topology.