Usage monitoring

You can monitor the application usage data of the users to understand which parts of the application are most used. This topic provides details on the Usage Monitoring feature.

How usage monitoring works

  • An event of a user will record a hit for a module and page.

    An event can be any of the following:

    • A custom call to a REST API that captures usage monitoring events.
    • A loading of a URI starting with a value that is configured to be monitored. For details, see URI-based monitoring settings.
    • A click of an app icon of PPM for Mobile.
  • When a user's session ends, be it due to logout, session timeout, or server shutdown, the hit count for each module or page is recorded in the PPM_USAGE_MONITORING table.
  • The PPM_USAGE_MONITORING table is cleaned by the "Logon Attempts Cleanup" service. You can configure how many days of usage data will be reserved in the table. For details, see Configure what to monitor.

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Enable usage monitoring

Before monitoring usage, you should enable the feature.

Go to the Feature Toggles page to enable the feature and decide whether users can prevent their usage data from being monitored. For details about feature toggles, see Use feature toggles to turn on/off features.

Feature toggle Description
Enable PPM Usage Monitoring

Turn it on to enable the feature.

When it is enabled, you can configure which usage data will be monitored. For details, see Configure what to monitor.
Allow Users to Prevent PPM Usage Monitoring

When the "Enable PPM Usage Monitoring" feature toggle is turned on, you can use this feature toggle to decide whether end users can prevent their usage data from being monitored.

You should keep it turned on if GDPR applies in your company.

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Configure what to monitor

After you enable PPM usage monitoring, a new section, Usage Monitoring, is available in the Administration menu. This page allows you to configure what to monitor.

To configure what to monitor:

  1. From the Administration menu, click Support Task > Usage Monitoring.

  2. Configure the following:

    Option Description
    How many days of the PPM usage data is stored in the PPM_USAGE_MONITORING table

    Every time when the "Logon Attempts Cleanup" service runs, the data that are recorded the specified number of days earlier will be removed from the PPM_USAGE_MONITORING table.

    For example, you enter 14 for this option, when the service runs, only the data that are recorded within the past 14 days will be reserved in the table; the data recorded earlier will be removed.
    Enable PPM for Mobile usage monitoring

    Whether or not to monitor the usage of PPM for Mobile.

    Every click of a mobile app will add a new record in the database table.
    Enable URI-based monitoring

    Whether or not to monitor the URI-based usage.

    If yes, add which URIs will be monitored. For details, see URI-based monitoring settings.

    URI-based monitoring settings

    Add the URIs to be monitored.

    1. Click Add New URI.

    2. Specify the following information.

      • URI starts with: Specify what the URI starts with. All URIs must start with /itg/.
      • Module: Specify which module the URI belongs to. The module does not have to relate to PPM modules.
      • Page: Specify which page the URI belongs to. The page does not have to relate to PPM pages.
      • Enabled: Whether or not to enable usage monitoring of the URI.
      • Actions: Remove or edit the URI settings.
  3. Click Apply.

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Usage Monitoring limitations

The Usage Monitoring feature has the following limitations:

  • It cannot capture end users' UI actions.
  • It only works with URIs actually loaded with HTTP calls from browsers. If a URI in the browser address bar is modified with JavaScript and does not result in HTTP calls, such as the Team Management page, the URI will not be monitored.
  • If the PPM server crashes, the usage monitoring data of all open sessions will be lost and will not be recorded in the database table.
  • It records up to 1,000 different modules or pages per user session. Additional hits on extra modules or pages will be ignored.
  • If a URI is configured to be monitored and is the start of the URI of many different loaded resources (images, css files, and etc.), it can result in a high hit count even when the page is visited just once.

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