We recently completed the analysis of our latest software user survey. It is always very exciting to review the results from such a survey since it is one of the best indications on why clients are using our software, where our strengths lies and what we can improve.
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Archive for the ‘WebSpy’ Category
WebSpy User Survey – The Why, How and What Behind Internet Monitoring
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Increase importing speed by utilizing dates in log file names
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Using Date Modifiers in file masks are a great way to increase the speed of your imports as they remove all the logs you don’t care about from the import list.
If you’re using WebSpy Vantage, you are probably interested in filtering your log file imports by date (only import files from the month of June for example). The obvious way to do this is to specify a date filter using the filters page in the Input Wizard. The problem is Vantage will still check every record in every log file being imported to see if it matches the date filter. If you have months or years worth of logs in the folder being imported, that’s a lot of data that Vantage has to pointlessly sift through.
The good news is, if your log files contain the date in their file name, then you can use file masks to instruct Vantage to never touch these unwanted files.
Video: Setup a complete Internet monitoring solution in less than 15 minutes!
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Here’s a video I put together demonstrating how to get up and running with a complete monitoring and reporting solution in less than 15 minutes. The video demonstrates three products: WebSpy Sentinel, for complete data capture, WebSpy Live for real time alerts, and WebSpy Analyzer Standard for analysis and reporting.
We’ve got a great deal at the moment where you get 20% off Live and Sentinel if you purchase them online with Analyzer Standard.
Convert Microsoft ISA 2006 MSDE logs to WebSpy compatible text logs
Monday, July 20th, 2009
Some customers have experienced issues converting their ISA MSDE logs to text using Microsoft’s MSDEToText.vbs script for ISA 2006 (available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=23531736-942f-466c-acb3-861a899d37b4&displaylang=en)
If you convert your logs to text using this script, they won’t import into WebSpy Vantage or Analyzer due to an extra line break in the header of the file (after #fields:).
We’ve therefore created a modified version of the script that creates compatible log files for WebSpy software.
Download the modified MSDEToText script:
MSDEToText.zip -26 KB
Also make sure the file names of your output log files contain the word WEB (for Web Proxy logs) or FWS (for Firewall Logs) as Analyzer and Vantage use these strings to automatically detect the type of ISA log file.
Happy converting!
WebSpy: The Origin and Controversy of the Name
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
The year was 1996 and young(ish) CEO, Jack Andrys, was racking his brain to come up with the perfect name for his business. It was the early stage of the Internet evolution with a shy number of 36 million users, 0.9% of the population. Not much compared to today’s staggering number of 1,596 million users, 23.8% of the population.
The concern for Internet misuse and costly drawbacks in the business arena were gradually rising and proactive Jack could already visualize an increasing need to monitor organizational web resources. Back then the software focused solely on analyzing and reporting on log files produced by proxy servers. Names such as Proxy Analyzer, Log File Reporter, Proxy Log Hog and Web Analyzer entered Jack’s brain but were quickly dismissed. He needed something better, something with more impact, a name that would draw attention, a descriptive name without the dullness, one name that could encompass the software’s functionality and create a conceptual understanding of what the company was all about….one name to rule them all…
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