Usage and Statistics

[ssenig]

Hello Scott -

Long time user, first time poster!

My Director asked if we could get usage stats from all of our in-house opacs running PWB. It looks like I can enable the history.txt file and log searches and count that way. But my problem is that we use a centralized pwb.ini file, so there is no way to customize the serverenvironment variable in the ini file. Or maybe there is and I missed it? Our goal here is to be able to say "OPAC1 had x# of searches, OPAC2 had x#, etc." so we can determine traffic patterns and which opacs are most used in the library.

Thank you.

- Another Scott

[Scott]

The following will include the "COMPUTERNAME" environmental variable for the computer name as the first element in the CSV in the history file. You can use any environmental variable for this setting.

[Security]
StationEnvironmentVariable=COMPUTERNAME

If you want unique history files, use the following setting which appends the "StationEnvironmentVariable" to the file name.

[Security]
UseUniqueHistoryFiles=True

With the first setting you can import the file into Excel and sort it by the first column. With the second setting each computer will have its own CSV file.

--Scott

[ssenig]

Thanks Scott.

But how does one customize each COMPUTERNAME when I have all my opacs pointing to a shared ini file at \\server\share\pwb.ini ? If I change that one, would all the clients get configured with the same COMPUTERNAME? Can I set COMPUTERNAME on the local ini file on the C:\ and keep the other settings on the server share? Or does the UseUniqueHistoryFiles setting just grab the windows host name?

[Scott]

The "COMPUTERNAME" is being taken from the Windows Environment Variable "COMPUTERNAME" which is the name of the computer on the network. You can technically use any Windows Environment Variable for the setting but the computer name is unique. PWB takes the Windows Environment Variable from the computer it is running on and adds it to the history file line.

More information:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx

Open a Windows command prompt and type "SET". This will give you a list of the Windows Environment Variables.

--Scott