Rob's Tech Fun and Games

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.

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.

Enabling usage reports on SharePoint should be straightforward – after all, basic information about the use of a Site or Site Collection is pretty important.  Of course, it isn’t as straightforward as you would think.

First, you need to enable “Usage Analysis Processing” in the Operations -> Usage Analysis section of the Central Administration site.   Enable Logging has to be ticked, in order to have information to process.  Make sure you have space in the logging folder – and make sure you set the permissions right if you change the default directory:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Logs

You also need to enable usage analysis processing, and set a time to process the logs.  Particularly with larger logs, this can be quite intensive, so you’ll need to schedule it to occur well outside peak usage hours.  There doesn’t seem to be any option to process it immediately when testing, so you’ll have to wait for the data to appear over a day or so.

In most guides, this is where the process stops.  However, you need to go into the Shared Service Provider, and under Office SharePoint Usage Reporting – Usage Reporting, you’ll find another set of options which must be enabled.

Ensure that both “Enable advanced usage analysis processing” and “enable search quey logging” are both ticked.  At this point, the system is live for usage reports … though you’ll be waiting for data until the scheduled time!