Well, I mention bugs and problems I run into. But I just ran into something I think is very very well done. The reports. I just checked it out again, and I'm very impressed with the changes. I enjoy how you can easily create a number of reports saved reports. I also like how well the reports present themselves in a number of flexible formats.
For us personally, we have sometimes found the hassles and bugs of Update Service to almost convince us to drop the service. However, if these reports do everything we'll need, this would most likely keep us using it.
There is one type of report that we would love to have and have not yet had the time to code. That is, usage by user. We suspect we have some users who are sharing our product throughout a large office. Or on other words, we expect our product to be used about 30 times per customer per month. But one product may be used 300 times by 10 people on one computer. Is there a way to see usage by user?
Well, you already know that our reports are based per-machine with the UserID, so you see those numbers in the reports. To gauge the users who utilise that machine, you'll need to write up profile information (eg username) and then sort that information using the profile reports. We do not include the current user's username as a part of our default profile info, so you'll need to populate it via your app or some other mechanism.
Regards, Kelly
PS. Also consult with your legal groupt to ensure you will not run afoul of any government regulations with regard to user identification. Just because you can collect certain things, doesn't mean you should. :rolleyes:
Brad Peterson wrote:
There is one type of report that we would love to have and have not yet had the time to code. That is, usage by user. We suspect we have some users who are sharing our product throughout a large office. Or on other words, we expect our product to be used about 30 times per customer per month. But one product may be used 300 times by 10 people on one computer. Is there a way to see usage by user?
I have to agree, reports is the best feature. If only they were well documented as to the value they can bring. On the subject of reports, what happened to the "Machine Profile" reports? I need to be able to report how many of our cusotmers are usign WIndows 95, 98, XP, 2000, 2003 etc. I also need to know if they have 64-bit or 32-bit OS.
