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Our Web Traffic Report Service creates
a set of web-based reports for webmasters to review
in order to track how his/her site is being used.
It gives him/her the data to measure the effectiveness
of the web pages within the profiled site.
The primary user of Web Traffic Report Service
is the site webmaster. He/she can use the metrics reports
to learn how his/her site is being viewed by the public.
It measures data including how many times pages are
viewed, when, and for how long, the hours/day with
the heaviest traffic, which browsers and hardware the
site visitors are using to view the site, errors, and
much more.
Much of the content of this document is extracted from
the more complete document WebTrends Log Analyzer-Advanced
Edition v8.1 Getting Started Guide which is
available in PDF
form (404 KB, 53 pages.)
To log into the MCPS Web Traffic Report Service
you will need a web URL address that goes to your
site's specific Web Traffic Report Service reports.
This will be distributed to you by e-mail.
You will be asked for a user name and
password. To view reports made available for the public,
please use "anonymous" as your username
and your e-mail address as your password.
The Web Traffic Report Service desktop allows
you to view and interact with the reports themselves.
This console will be viewable at the specific URL
defined for the specific web site. The desktop is
kept current with new data on a scheduled basis, so
whenever you bring up the desktop, the most up-to-date
reports are always at your fingertips. In the desktop
you can choose various reports, view data across various
time ranges, or export your reports to Microsoft Word
or Excel documents, comma-delimited text files, or
PDF files. The following graphic shows a sample desktop.
A Web Traffic Report Service profile is used to specify settings about
how your site analysis will run, such as location of
web data log files, how often the reports are updated,
which users have access, and more. Each profile generates
and maintains a set of reports for a specific set of
data, such as a particular web site or segment of a
web site.
Profiles have been set up by the Web Traffic Report Service administrator
for most schools and some non-school based offices.
The software limits the number of profiles available
for the license, so individual profiles may not be available
for each individual directory on the MCPS web. Profiles
are only available for web sites hosted on the MCPS
server www.mcps.k12.md.us (aka www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org).
Schools or offices hosting their sites with an outside
commercial ISP will not have reports available through
this service.
A report, as defined in our Web Traffic Report Service,
is a single table and graph set that convey the same
information in one or more ways. Examples include the
Top Pages report, containing a trend graph over time,
a top items graph, and a top items table, all on the
same screen page.
A profile might generate a large number of reports
in a single analysis cycle, and each time period (day,
week, month, etc.) might have many reports associated
with it. When you choose an item from the table of
contents in the Web Traffic Report Service desktop,
you are viewing either a report or a dashboard.
The dashboard — a collection of "thumbnails"
of many different reports — is a visual summary
of the most significant information for that template
over a particular time range. Typically, this is the
first thing that appears when launching the desktop.
Click the title of a thumbnail to drill
down to more complete information. For example, you
can click the title of the "Visits Trends"
thumbnail on the Dashboard, and the detailed Visits
Trends report opens in a new browser window.
The reports shown in the Web Traffic Report Service desktop consist of
three major sections:
- the calendar frame which controls the time period
being viewed
- The table of contents frame which controls the reports
or dashboard being viewed
- and the report frame that displays the results.
The calendar frame appears in the upper
left corner of the screen and shows a standard calendar
for a month. By default, the calendar appears showing
the day closest to the current date or closest date
for which data has been analyzed and reports generated.
Users can select any other day by clicking on that
date in the calendar. Weeks are chosen along the right
side, months at the top of the calendar, calendar quarters
at the upper right corner (Q1, Q2, etc.). The longest
time range that can be chosen is one year, chosen at
the bottom of the calendar. You can scroll forward
or backward by monthly or yearly increments as well
using the arrows. The dates will be grayed out if reports
are not available for that time segment.
If a certain time frame is grayed out
in the calendar, then either that time period has not
yet been analyzed, or that time period type (days, weeks,
etc.) has not been enabled in the profile you are using.
Profiles can be set to purge report time
ranges after a certain time has elapsed — the
most common setting is to remove daily reports that
are more than a month old. The is done to reduce disk
space consumed by the summary files required to keep
the reports.
The Table of Contents frame appears in the left pane
below the calendar. All of the available reports and
dashboards are organized here. To load a report or dashboard,
locate it in the Table of Contents, and click on its
title. (You can expand or collapse folders that contain
reports by clicking on the arrow toggle control next
to the folder name. The results for the time period
selected in the calendar will load in the report frame
to the right.
The report frame on the right side of the desktop displays
either the report or dashboard chosen in the Table of
Contents for the time frame chosen in the calendar.
The default item to appear in the report frame is usually
the dashboard for the default template. The profile
name and the web site name are displayed at the top
left of the report frame, range and specific dates covered
are displayed as well.
In a browser window, go to the URL for your web site
(profile) reporting. Use the calendar to select the
date or range of dates, select desired report from the
Table of Contents, or click on the title of a graph
or table in the Dashboard to navigate to the content
you wish to view.
All the reports consist of a title, a short description,
and a table of results. Most reports also include a
trend graph over time and a top items graph. In most
reports, each table and graph is color-coded to allow
you to relate items in the table to items in the graph.
If there are more results than can be displayed in the
table or graph, you can cycle through to the next group
of results, or even to the end of the results by using
the VCR-like controls at the bottom of the table or
graph. For each graph displayed, options appear at the
top right of the graph to change graph type. Options
available vary by the type of information displayed.
Each report has a unique help card associated with
it, displayed below all other tables and graphs shown.
If the report is very long, you can zoom to the help
card from the top of the report by clicking the Help
button on the report title bar. The help card contains
information to help you interpret and make use of the
information displayed in the report.
Reports are in the HTML format. You can select and
print only the report frame of the report being viewed
or you can export reports or chapters in alternate formats.
Web Traffic Report Service reports are in HTML format.
With a click of a button, they can be easily converted
to Microsoft Word or Excel documents, a CSV (comma
separated values) text files, or to PDF. This makes
it possible to include the report's information in
a presentation or other document or for the CSV file — for
import into a database. This only works on Windows
OS machine with MS office and Sun's JRE v1.4 or later,
and the WebTrends®
Document Utility installed.
You should navigate to the report you wish to convert
or export using the calendar and Table of Contents.
Select the export icon 
from the upper right corner of the calendar frame.
In the report frame you will be presented with options
for running the WebTrends® Document Utility. First
select the desired report format. Then choose the
report content to be included. You can get only the
selected report and limit the number of items to
be displayed in the table, or you can select the
complete set of reports for the selected time frame.
Choose "Auto"
to automatically download and run the WebTrends® Document
Utility. Note: Outlook and all MS Office applications
must be closed prior to running this utility. You
may be asked to provide your user name and password
during the installation of the utility. If your
report is set for public access, use "anonymous" for
user name and your e-mail address for the password.
There is a
status window to let you know what's going on. If successful,
the utility will ask you to specify where the files
are to be saved. Then the conversions will run and
if the output format is an MS Office file, the document
will be opened for use and or editing.
Note: Some MCPS computers may not
have the necessary components pre-installed. In an
MCPS TechMod school it may not be possible to make
any changes to the workstation to enable conversions
or exporting of reports.
Webmasters and their supervisors may share the information
with whomever they deem appropriate. However, Web Services
does not recommend that report URLs be published on
school or office web sites. That would increase the
amount of traffic to the Web Traffic Report server
and jeopardize its ability to generate reports, its
primary purpose. The server’s resources are needed
for report generation, not serving reports to the public.
Of course they can be displayed online during a presentation
and the URL can be exchanged via e-mail on a limited
basis. If webmasters wish to share reports, they can
print them out for display or distribution. We strongly
suggest webmasters bookmark their Web Traffic Report
URL and print out reports regularly and store them
in a binder as an offline and historical archive. Web
Services has found this approach very valuable and
useful in its own analysis work.
Read the full PDF document. Much of the content of
this document is extracted from the more complete document
WebTrends Log Analyzer-Advanced Edition v8.1
Getting Started Guide which is available in
PDF
form (404 KB, 53 pages.)
For specific questions or issues, contact the Web Services
Team via e-mail at webmaster@mcpsmd.org.
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