Analyzer Resources

---

Analyzer's resource area includes:

---

Analyzer Standard Testimonials

---

BBBank eG

Nelson Gonzalez says:
"Our key business driver was to possess the ability to have an overview of the way our employees surf the Internet and for what needs. WebSpy's Analyzer Standard has helped to reduce costs and we now have all the necessary reporting for accountability purposes e.g we can now manage our internet expenditure effectively, giving us better cost controls. This includes statistical detail reporting by organization, department and clients. As a consequence, of the reporting information gathered we have deterred seven cases of inappropriate Internet usage and reduced our bandwidth costs by 15%."

---

Reynolds & Reynolds

Mathew Bugden (Infrastructure Administrator) says:
"Reynolds & Reynolds uses WebSpy software on a weekly basis. Since installing WebSpy Analyzer Standard we are able to identify and analyze accurate information on bandwidth/download problem areas. We find the reporting tool very detailed and comprehensive which allows us to investigate any internet or email misuse. WebSpy software has increased our productivity, assisting in cost savings and time management. We are very happy with this user friendly monitoring software."

---

Swedish Municipal Agency

Stefan Forsman (Network Administrator) says:
"We began experiencing heavy Internet usage on our 2 X 2Mbit access. We wanted to acquire a good statistical program to identify and resolve the bottlenecks. After an initial evaluation we decided to buy WebSpy Analyzer Standard application and install it on one of our desk top computers. We currently run a monthly statistical analysis and have also implemented the WebSpy application in our education network. This provides our teaching staff with a far better view of the student's internet habits.

The support for Novell Border Manager Proxy, and the ability to see the Internet material accessed and subsequently divided into different categories, gives us a far greater perspective of Internet usage behaviors, overall."

---

Cajacirculo

Francisco Simon Gomez says:
"Using WebSpy Analyzer Standard to monitor our ISA server Logs files, provided the benefit of being able to see the internet access from different users via Active Directory and to be able to obtain information quickly from the log files."

---

Department of Health and Human Services

Kevin Stark (Manager, IT Infrastructure) says:
"The Department of Health and Human Services, as part of the Tasmanian state government, has outsourced the management of our wide-area-network services, including proxies. While it is intending to have direct access to our own proxies in the future, at this stage we only have access to periodic internet usage logs.

WebSpy Analyzer Standard has been a great tool for profiling and providing the management reports required. The tool is powerful and addresses both agency level and individual level reports but the level of detail extractable for business level groupings is dependent on the structure of the network address space. WebSpy have also provided good support and advice on issues for planning purposes."

---

Information Systems Company Netherlands

Systems Administrator says:
"We used to utilize spread sheets to generate reports on internet activity and this was proving time consuming. We now only use WebSpy Analyzer Standard when we suspect a problem. What we like most is that we can see everything, including users, addresses, everything. As long as you use the right report you can always see what you want to see."

---

Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Paul Verrijp says:
"The college was unable to monitor or report on student Internet activity. By using WebSpy Analyzer Standard, it has given the option to run quite in-depth levels of reporting reports on students Internet traffic activity."

---

Smith & Nephew

Oriol Morral says:
"We were looking for a tool that would allow us to view the HTTP traffic and ensure compliance to our company's Internet usage policy. WebSpy Analyzer Standard allows us to view detailed information about all users' web traffic."

---

Manufacture des Montres Rolex Bienne SA

Michel Bucher says:
"We were experiencing an unacceptable level of recreational browsing resulting in rising Internet bills. With the help of WebSpy Analyzer Standard it helped us identify exactly where the problem was. This allowed us to close access to the most commonly used web sites on our Proxy Server. Using the Analyzer 'drilldown' feature has helped to reduce costs and we now have all the necessary reporting for accountability purposes."

---

Mitcham Council

Richard Love (Manager) says:
"The benefits of using WebSpy Analyzer Standard Suite include the ability for real time (live) monitoring of Internet access by staff with customized alerts for inappropriate access, excessive internet downloads, etc. Following installation of WebSpy, we reduced our internet traffic by 30% which resulted in significant savings. Equally important, staff are no longer spending wasted time on the Internet when they could be involved in more productive work. It is important that the use of WebSpy is backed up by appropriate policies and procedures."

---

Australind SHS

Graeme Watson (Deputy Principal) says:
"Australind SHS uses WebSpy Analyzer Standard to run a variety of reports on student internet and email usage. We find the software extremely user friendly. WebSpy Analyzer enables us to address any significant downloads or inappropriate internet use. The software allows us to access all online data information in a timely and efficient manner."

---

Newton Moore SHS

Michelle Dowsen (IT Manager) says:
"We have WebSpy software installed on our School Network and we use it on a continual basis to monitor all users, this includes staff and students. WebSpy Analyzer Standard allows us to monitor and control our Internet and Network Traffic and produce detailed analysis reports. Students and staff alike are aware that their access is being monitored and controlled and this has increased the level of productivity quite dramatically."

---

Kogarah Council

Fab Zincone (IT Manager) says:
"Kogarah Council has been taking advantage of WebSpy software for more than 3 years. We run monthly reports for our management team. The internet usage reporting ensures that all staff stay on task while using our online facilities. WebSpy Analyzer Standard's log import facility is one of its best features. It saves a lot of time and is very simple to use. We are happy to recommend WebSpy software, particularly to other government agencies."

---

Dywidag Systems International

The main user/facilitator of this software at DSI is Brenten Smith, Systems Administrator. The following paragraph reflects DSI IT staff and management's satisfaction with WebSpy Analyzer Version 4.1.

David Caldwell (Manager, Information Systems) says:
"We have recently upgraded to Version 4.1 of WebSpy Analyzer Standard. This version has provided more functionality and enables us to produce more accurate and detailed reporting. The product is easy to use, and has a very friendly user interface. It enables reports to be easily dissected by many categories such as user, department, site, date, time of day, and many more, all of which can be respectively costed and ranked by various criteria. Overall, the product is easy to use, reliable, accurate and is a valuable tool for providing management with periodic and ad hoc information."

---

City of Blue Mountains

Warwick Purdy says:
"The City of Blue Mountains use WebSpy Analyzer Standard to monitor staff Internet usage to ensure that usage complies with our Internet Usage Policy. The software helps us to pinpoint what specific users are doing online during office hours. The report generation and the ability to drill down through information is very effective and time saving. Some of the results from these reports have lead to certain abused sites being blocked, which has decreased unreasonable non-business Internet usage and the associated costs. This also keeps employees on task, thus increasing our productivity. All in all, we have found monitoring Internet usage by staff during working hours beneficial."

---

Private School France

Network Security Administrator says:
"A few months after the implementation of our Internet service, we realized that our users (students) were visiting a large proportion of inappropriate Websites. Our blocking tool is not effective enough to block the access to those specific websites without blocking legitimate education websites. By using the WebSpy Analyzer Standard software we are able to identify the source by several ways (hour, class, room, etc...). The software is very easy to use."

---

Westbourne Grammer School

Justin Mijares (Systems Engineer) says:
"We use WebSpy software on a daily basis and find it to be very beneficial. WebSpy Analyzer Standard gives us valuable reports on student's web and email usage. We use these reports to discuss any concerns or misuse with parents or teachers. WebSpy is very user friendly and easy to customize to our specific needs (eg monitoring the length of time a student has been using the web). The ability to monitor and clearly report on all internet and mail traffic is something every educational facility should utilize."

Back to top

---

Sample Reports

---

The following reports can be created using WebSpy's Analyzer range.
Please note: these HTML reports can only be viewed using Internet Explorer.

Web Reports

• Department Activity
• Large Downloads
• Organization
• Productivity
• Unacceptable File Downloads
• Unproductive Browsing
• User Activity

Back to top

---

Analyzer FAQs

---

I've noticed differences in total Browsing Time values displayed throughout Analyzer. For example, if I drilldown to Users, I can see the Browsing Time for a particular user, but if I drilldown into that user to see the sites they've visited, the Total Browsing Time at the bottom of the screen is different. Why?

It's not unusual for the browsing time for a list of sites to be different to the total browsing time for the user that visited those sites. The reason for the difference is that you could have multiple sites open at the same time, or you may have visited some sites for less than 1 second.

This is one way this behavior could happen: if I go to www.webspy.com and browse that site from 12:00 to 12:05, then that would be 5 minutes browsing time for that session, and 5 minutes for www.webspy.com.

However, if at the same time I open a second browser window to www.cnn.com, and also browse that site from 12:00 to 12:05, then in total my user and session browsing time would still be only 5 minutes, but the total browsing time for sites would be 10 minutes, as there is 5 minutes on www.webspy.com and 5 minutes on www.cnn.com.

Alternatively, if you visit www.webspy.com only at 12:00:01 and www.cnn.com at only 12:04:01, then the browsing time for www.webspy.com would be 0 seconds, and the browsing time for www.cnn.com would also be 0 seconds, however the browsing time for the user would be 4 minutes.

This is why browsing time for sites can be very different to browsing time for users, sessions and dates.

How is Browsing Time calculated?

Browsing Time is the estimated time a user spent browsing the web. In addition to Users, you can view the Browsing Time for Sites (the total time spent browsing a site), Dates (the total time spent browsing on a particular date), Sessions (the total time of a browsing session) and Departments (the sum of all the department's user's browsing time).

Browsing Time is calculated by looking at the date/time stamp of each hit, and then grouping the hits into sessions. The total time of one session is calculated as the time between the first and last hits of the session.

Hits are grouped into the same session if they occur within five minutes of each other. If there is a break of more than five minutes with no hits made, then the previous session is finished and a new session is started when the next hit is made. The five minute 'Session Threshold' value can be changed in Tools | Options | Summaries (see Summaries Options).

Browsing Time should not be confused with Download Time which is the time taken to download a resource from the web site.

I deleted a log file from Folders and Files view in Storages, but the number of hits in the storage is still the same. Why?

You need to 'Reload all hits' after deleting files or folders as there is no relationship between the hits imported and the folder / file structure in Storages. This means that the hits associated with a log file in your storage will still be represented in Reports, even though that log file has been deleted. The functionality to delete log files and folders is for advanced users that have deleted periods such as Dates, Weeks, or Months from their storage, and know which log files these hits originated from. Deleting periods such as Dates, Weeks, and Months will delete the hits from your storages, but they will be reloaded next time you 'Reload all hits', unless the log files that the hits originated from are also deleted from the storage.

Reloading the Hits in one particular file of folder by right-clicking the file/folder and selecting Reload should be avoided, as this will duplicate the info in your storages. The safest way to reload data is by 'Reloading all hits'.

My logging device logs in GMT (UTC). How can I report on my log file using my local time zone?

You can set the time zone offset when importing your log files. Go to Storages, create a new storage and import logs into the storage. When you are on the Input Format page of the Import Wizard, select the format of your log files and click the Format Properties button on the toolbar. Select the appropriate time zone offset from the 'Time Zone' drop down list and click OK. Proceed through the Import Wizard to import your logs. When you analyze or report on the logs, your times will be displayed in your current time zone.

I am having trouble opening WSR reports on my 2003 server, is there something I can do to fix this problem?

Windows 2003 Servers have special security settings that block the WSR files from opening correctly. To open WSR reports on a Windows 2003 Server you will need to turn off "Secure Browsing". To do this go to Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Add/Remove Windows Components, then double-click 'Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration' and clear the checks for administrators or all users as appropriate.

Can I create reports for each of my organization's departments?

Yes, you can create separate reports for each department. You can even schedule these reports to run and be emailed to the appropriate manager automatically.

I want all my reports to be accessible from a web site. How do I schedule a 'Publish to web' task?

Create a task with a 'Run a Report' action. Proceed through the Report Wizard ensuring the report format is set to Web Document. On the Publish page of the Report, choose 'Copy Report to a location'. On the next page enter the website directory where you would like the files copied to, and click the 'Extract' checkbox. This will extract all the HTML pages directly to your website's directory. All you then need to do is link to the index page for each report from your web page. This page has the same name as your report with the extension .html. This process will also create a subfolder of the same name containing all the graphics and other pages required to make up the report.

How do I set up a daily task to import yesterday's logs into a new storage and run a report on that storage?

To do this you need to set up an import action to only import yesterday's logs into a new storage with the current date prefixed to the storage name, and then set a report action to report on the storage with the current date prefixed to the storage name. You then need to schedule these two actions to run on the same day. Go to Tasks and select "New Task Dialog" to launch the Task Dialog.

Adding the import action:

1. Click the Actions Tab and select Add | Import log files into new storage. This launches the Import Wizard. Click Next.
2. On the Storage page, enter a name for your storage such as 'Daily Storage' and check the 'Prefix with the current date' checkbox. This will insert the current date at the start of each storage name. Click Next.
3. On the Input Format page, select the format of your log files and click Next.
4. On the Input Location page, select Add | Folder and navigate to the folder where your logging device stores its log files. Click OK to launch the Folder Properties dialog. On the Folder Properties dialog ensure the checkboxes 'Use this folder when importing new hits' and 'Search this folder for new files when importing new hits' is checked. Click OK. Click Next.
5. On the Select page, check the 'Select Dates' checkbox. Click Next.
6. On the Select Dates page, check the 'Show past' checkbox, and enter 1 Days in the edit and dropdown boxes. Do not check the 'Include current day' checkbox. This filter will ensure that only yesterday's logs are imported. Click Next and then click Finish on the final page of the Import Wizard.

Adding the report action:

1. On the Actions tab of the Task dialog, click Add | Run a report.
2. On the Report Types page, select the type of report you want to run on the daily storage. Click Next.
3. On the storages page, check the checkbox next to the storage you named in step 2 of Adding the import action (for example, select '[date] Daily Storage'). Ensure no other storages are selected. Click Next.
4. Proceed through the Report Wizard selecting the report requirements for your daily report. Hint: You can set the report to be emailed to you when it is generated on the Publish page on the Report Wizard.

Schedule the actions to run on the same day:

1. On the Task Dialog, click the Schedule tab and click the Add button on the toolbar. This launches the Schedule Wizard. Click Next.
2. On the Period page, select 'Daily'. Click Next.
3. On the Daily page, select the date from when you would like the task to begin. Select the time you would like the task to run on each day. Note: if you are importing a lot of data, ensure you set an appropriate start time to allow both task actions to run on the same day. Enter "1" to perform this task every day. Click Next.
4. On the Account login page, enter your login details so the task can run when you are logged out of your PC. Click Next and click Finish on the final page of the wizard.

Finally, click the General Tab of the Task Dialog and give the task a name such as 'Daily Task' and ensure the 'Allow this task to run as scheduled' checkbox is checked. Click OK.

Analyzer is pretty neat. However, since my logs don't always get the DNS name of the sites, it makes it a real pain to see what sites the users have been browsing. When it only shows the IP address I have to browse to the website just to see where they have been. That becomes too time consuming. Is there anything that can be done about this?

Analyzer has the ability to Resolve IPs when you are looking at Sites. Simply go to Summaries and drilldown into Sites, then click the Resolve IPs link in the Advanced task pad. You will need to select an alias to resolve the IPs into such as 'Sitenames'. Once the resolve has finished, select the alias you resolved the IPs into in the Aliases task pad. Any resolved IPs will now be displayed by their resolved DNS name.

However, the Resolve IPs functionality in Analyzer simply contacts your DNS server to resolve the IPs. If your logging device couldn't find a resolved DNS name, then it is unlikely that Analyzer will find it. You could use a web resource like www.samspade.org to determine site names, or try optimizing your local DNS server.

Is it necessary to install Analyzer per client on the workstation side?

All WebSpy software is designed to be installed on workstation PCs. You only need to install a WebSpy application in one place on your network in order to monitor the entire network. So if you have only one proxy device or firewall, you will only need to install a WebSpy product on one PC and point it to where the logs are located.

When reporting on some users, some of the sites they've visited are showing up as 'Unspecified'. What does this mean?

When Analyzer displays a site name as ‘Unspecified’ it means that no site name or site IP address was recorded in the log file. You may still be able to drilldown on the Unspecified site to Resources. If there are resources, then this usually means that the site is your own website and your logging device does not log its name.

How does Analyzer calculate download time?

Most servers records the time it took to download the specific resource associated with a hit. When looking at Users, Analyzer calculates the Download Time column by adding up these times for all of the resources (hits) that user downloaded. A user could be downloading multiple resources simultaneously, e.g. by having multiple browser windows open at the same time.

Why are sites listed, even though I don't remember visiting them?

Sometimes websites use pictures or other files that are stored on a different website. Whenever this happens, your Internet browser will request the files stored elsewhere and then display them as part of the website you are viewing. However, the original location of each file, not where you viewed the file, is listed in your proxy log files, and Analyzer uses those log files to generate your summaries and reports. For example, www.webspy.com/index.asp may reference an image at www.www.isaserver.org/images/logo.gif. This second site and resource is recorded in your log file and therefore Analyzer displays this site, even though you did not go directly to www.www.isaserver.org.

My Scheduled Tasks do not run anymore. Why?

The most common reason for this is that you have changed your logon password. If you change your logon password for the computer that runs your tasks, you will need to modify each scheduled task so that it uses the new password. If you do not, the task will not run at all.

To do this, open the Edit task dialog for each task by double-clicking on the task's name, go to the Schedules tab and double click the schedule to launch the Schedule Wizard. Proceed through the wizard to the Account Details page, and update your details as necessary. Once you have finished the wizard your task will run as before.

 

Back to top