How Does Usage Intelligence Detect New/Lost Users or Installs/Uninstalls?
How Does Usage Intelligence Detect New/Lost Users or Installs/Uninstalls?
Usage Intelligence detects user installations/uninstallations based solely on end-user call-home activity, therefore you are not required to make any updates or integration in your installer or uninstaller script. This makes it easier to maintain and also works uniformly even if your software is a simple executable without an installer.
New installation: The first time a user launches your application, it is recorded as a new installation. Every new installation is fingerprinted and uniquely tracked for the duration of its lifetime. For more information, see How Does Usage Intelligence Identify Unique Users/Installations?
Lost installation: When a user uninstalls, deletes, or does not run your software anymore, it will stop calling home to the server. After it stops calling home for a specific number of days, it is declared lost.
Active installation: In reports, "Active" is the number of unique installations active within the selected date range. By active we mean that they either called home within that date range or else did some activity (such as had a session running) during that date range, if we know of any activity by an Installation during that date range, that Installation is listed as "Active".
Setting the Days Declared Lost Value
The default time interval after which a user is declared lost by the server is set to 40 days. However this value can be configured by following these steps:
To configure number of days before user is declared lost:
Log in to the the Usage Intelligence Dashboard.
Switch to the respective product.
On the Administration menu, select Product.
On the Product page, change the value for Days Declared Lost.
NOTE: When changing the Days Declared Lost setting, it may take up to 1 minute for the new setting to take effect.
NOTE: This value is used when generating the reports and changing it does not impact the stored data.
What Happens When a User is Declared Lost and Then Starts Using the Software Again?
When a user is declared lost, it is based on the assumption that this user will never be seen again. However if the user is seen again after being declared lost, his status is once again set to active and he will not show up in any lost user reports. This is automatically handled by the server.
For example if you have a days-to-declare-lost interval set to 30 days and a user hasn't used your software since January 1, on January 30 that user will be declared lost and will show in reports as a lost user. However if this user re-emerges again on February 5 and your application calls home, then the server will no longer consider them lost. Hence any lost users reports generated on or after February 5 will not include this particular user.
