The Portal Activity Report is enabled by default in NW 7.0 as well as in NW04. Only starting from NW 7.3 it is disabled by default. If you do not use this feature, you should disable it, in order to improve the portal performance, as this feature gathers statistics for every iView and page that are being rendered in the portal. The portal activity statistics are collected, and then being processed on the database, consuming database as well as server resources.
With this function, you can create the statistics about user activities (what content they are using – iViews or pages). You can display the following information in a portal activity report:
● Information and visualization about the number of user logons during a given period of time.
● Information about the portal users who are logged on.
● Information about the number of users who viewed certain pages and iViews.
You must have installed and configured the function as a prerequisite.
From 7.3. How to disable/enable Portal Activity Report:
Enabling and Configuring the Portal Activity Report
Following is a description of the workflow for setting up and using the portal activity report:
- Enable and configure the activity report service in SAP NetWeaver Administrator. By default, the activity report service is turned off, and no data is collected for iViews and pages. You need to configure the service if you want to change the default properties for data collection.
-
To be able to work with Web Dynpro iViews and pages, configure the Web Dynpro hook in NWA.
- In SAP NetWeaver Administrator, go to
- In the module list (under the overview tab), search for webdynpro/resources/sap.com/pb and select it.
- Under Web Module Details choose the Web Dynpro Properties tab and select Components/com.sap.portal.pb.PageBuilder/PortalHooks.
- Change the value of the property sap.com/_activity_reporting_wd_hook;com.sap.portal.activity.reporting.ActivityReportingWDHook to true and save.
- Start creating reports.
Prior 7.3. How to disable/enable Portal Activity Report:
Prerequisites:
You have permissions to the Service Configuration page and to the com.sap.portal.activityreport.core service. By default, members of the built-in system administrator role have the required permission.
Procedure:
- Navigate to the Service Configuration Editor: System Administration -> System Configuration -> Service Configuration.
- Open the configuration page:
- Navigate to the Service Configuration Editor: In the Portal Catalog, navigate to Applications -> com.sap.portal.activityreport.core -> Services -> ActivityReport.
- Right-click ActivityReport and choose Configure. The properties for the portal activity report application are listed.
- The data collection service is turned on by default. To turn it off, set the following property to false (the property is not case sensitive):
Setting Description Activate portal activity report Starts and stops the data collection service. Enter true (default) or false. - Select Save to save your settings.
- Restart the portal application:
- In the Portal Catalog, navigate to Application -> com.sap.portal.activityreport.core.
- Right-click com.sap.portal.activityreport.core and Administrate. The Application Details Editor is displayed.
- Click Restart to restart the portal activity report application.
FAQ’s - Portal Activity Report Functionality
You are using the Portal Activity Report in Enterprise Portal and have doubts about the functionality of this tool. This page answers most of the functionality related questions on Portal Activity Report.
FAQ's
Q – I stopped the ‘Portal Activity Report’ service but it is s still running?
A- Merely stopping the ‘Portal Activity Report’ service would not disable the Portal Activity Report application and it will restart automatically, whenever the service is called again because of the Portal Runtime (PRT) Mechanism.
This is a PRT mechanism and the right way to disable the ‘Portal Activity Report’ service is to modify the service parameter ‘Activate portal activity report’ to ‘false’ and then save the changes.
Q- How to create activity Report of the Current Activity? Is it possible? If not is there any workaround?
A- It is not possible to create an activity report of the current activity which could be as simple as finding out which users are currently logged in.The reason lies in the ‘aggregation time’. The aggregation time is at the end of each hour. Therefore, the information is only available for the last completed hour.
The same mechanism is also followed for other intervals such as daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly. For example, the activity data for the current day would only be shown the next day and so on. Importantly, there is no workaround for this. However, another reporting tool called ‘Activity Data Collector’ can be used for such information.
Q- How are the Anonymous users monitored in the ‘Portal Activity Report’?
A- Starting from NW04 SP22 and EP7.0 SP16, the anonymous users are monitored with a new approach promising improved performance and lesser overload on the database.
Q- What is ‘isAnonimousUnited’ in the Portal Activity Report service?
A- This property is a part of the new aggregation mechanism for the anonymous users and it is for internal usage only. This property is set to ‘true’ only once, and should not be changed. It is used only once when the new code for uniting anonymous users is executed.
Once the old values are calculated to the new values, this property is set to ‘true’ automatically and it must remain the same. Although, this property is editable in the service configuration, the user should refrain from editing it. In the editor, it has been clearly documented as ‘For internal usage only’. Since, there is no way to hide properties in PRT (Portal Runtime) services; it is visible in the service configuration
Q- After applying the latest SDA from note 1084379, how can we know that the database tables have been converted to new format same as that of the new aggregating mechanism for anonymous users?
A- After applying the latest SDA you can check the new format as per the following screenshot, which compares the older format and the new format for the records of anonymous user.
Q- How can we remove the anonymous users from the activity report?
A- There is no standard method to remove the information for anonymous users from the Portal Activity Report. However, the workarounds that can help would include removing the Monitor Hits property from the content bearing in mind that this will affect the monitoring for the authenticated users as well. Hence this solution is valid when having special content that is meant specifically for Guest users.
Second method to avoid monitoring for the anonymous users and the content visited by them is to remove the content itself from those users i.e. not to assign any content to the anonymous users whose property “Monitor Hits” is set to true.
Q- How to improve Portal performance with respect to the Portal Activity Report?
A- The first and foremost idea for improving the portal performance w.r.t Portal Activity Report is to disable the service itself if you are not using it.
Secondly, monitor the content and users judiciously i.e. monitor only the portal content and the users who are required and not all the users.
You can find detailed information under :
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/x/yAr2D
Q- Why does the Portal Activity Report iview times out and how can I resolve this problem?
A- Sometimes, because of huge data in the database tables and the complex queries (like filter by grouping) fired on the database, it takes more time to retrieve the result for the Report and the iview times out. To resolve this problem, implement the workarounds mentioned in SAP note 1032984.
Q- What is ‘Data Retention’ and how does it work?
A- Data retention is a mechanism that deletes all the values which are older than the given time configured. . Data Collection service (called ActivityReport) contains some parameters for data retention which specifies, in days, how long to retain daily ,hourly, monthly, quarterly & weekly statistics. This is for reducing the high data load on the database tables. This property is configurable.
Q- Why the data still exists in the DB tables even after the retention time given in the service has expired?
A- This is a problem in some versions of the portal where the data retention mechanism was available but the retention was not working fine. This problem has now been fixed and you can apply the latest SDA file from SAP note – 1084379 to resolve this issue.
Q- Can we get an Activity Report in a different Time zone other than GMT?
A- It is not possible to get the Activity Report in the different Time zone other than GMT. This is not configurable. However, if the report is required in different time zone then you can use another reporting tool called Activity Data Collector.
Q- What is different between Hits and Visits?
A- The hits and visits are two different columns in the database tables and hence, they are not same. The difference between them is that:
IMPRESSIONS (HITS) signifies the number of times the object was viewed in the specified period (hit count) .Whereas,
VISITS signifies the number of unique users who saw the object in the specified period
Q- Is Portal Activity Report and Activity Data Collector inter-dependent? Can they be used together?
A- Portal Activity Report and Activity Data Collector are not dependent on each other. The only thing they have in common is their tracing locations. Although, they can be used together, it is always recommended to use only one tool at any given point of time for performance reasons. Activity Data Collector is capable of collecting the same information as Portal Activity report so using both the tools at the same time is not required.
Q- Can the aggregation time and service be configured? Why and why not?
A- Configuring the aggregation time and service is not possible because Portal Activity Report is designed to work on the GMT time zone and the aggregation is always done at the end of each hour and end of each day. Changing this could cause a lot of problems like loss of data and other issues, making it not configurable.
Q- How to add content in the Iview and Page Activity Report? (I.e. add content from Role and not from PCD)
A- For the Iview and page Activity Report, the content should be added from the role to the activity report and not directly from the Portal Content. The reason behind this is that an end user calls a page/iview always via a role and not the content that is located directly under a folder in the portal content.
Monitoring the users and content is done from the roles hence you need to add the role that contains the pages/iviews you want to monitor and not the page/iview directly from the PCD. Remove the iviews and pages from the table in the editor which you don’t need to be monitored.
For detailed description refer to :
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/x/84BeCw
Q- Can I have the latest version of PAR if I have problems in the Portal Activity Report Application?
A- Yes, the latest SDA file can be downloaded from SAP note – 1084379 which contains all the fixes described in Note 998653. Applying the SDA will bring portal activity report application on the latest release irrespective of the portal’s current Support Package. This operation can be done as the Portal Activity Report is a standalone feature that does not depend on/by other applications.
Q- Why is the 'Viewer IDs' column empty?
A- By default Portal Activity Report does not collect users IDs in order not to reduce performance. Whenever there is a need to see the IDs of the users who are using a certain content, a special property exists on pages called "Monitor Users", and it should be set to "true"/"yes" (by default it is "false"). This property does not exist on iViews - see next Q for more details.
Q- Why ’Monitor Users’ property is not shown for iviews but only for pages?
A- Due to performance reasons. The assumption is that iViews are located usually inside pages, so whenever a user is rendering a page, all the iViews within this page are being rendered automatically. Hence collecting the names of the users both for the page and for the iViews within this page is not necessary in order to see who is using those iViews. Moreover, this property is by default "false" in order not to reduce performance. Whenever there is a need to monitor a specific content, only this content should be set to "true".
For More information:
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/EP/How+to+Configure+Portal+Activity+Report
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/EP/Creating+a+Portal+Activity+Report+Iview+for+monitoring+Page+and+Iview+activities
No comments:
Post a Comment