Enable usage analysis processing (Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration Help)

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Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

 

You can use usage analysis to track how Web sites are being used. Log files are created daily to track usage. When a log file is processed, a flag is set. Log files are not automatically deleted; you can specify that up to 30 log files are kept at one time. When you reach that number of log files, no more files are created until some are deleted.

Usage analysis data is gathered from front-end Web servers and collected into temporary files. When the log files are processed, the data is merged into the content databases on the back-end servers.

Usage analysis data is kept for up to three months. Daily information is stored for 31 days, whereas monthly information is stored for 24 months.

Because usage analysis processing runs only once per day, no data is collected until the day after you enable usage analysis processing. Also, log processing processes only a single day's data. Therefore, if you disable log processing for a week yet leave data logging enabled, the next time you enable processing, only one day's log files will be processed.

When you configure usage analysis processing for a server, the processing takes effect for any existing Web applications. If you later add a new Web application, and if you want to monitor its usage, you must enable usage analysis processing again.

  1. On the top navigation bar, click Operations.

  2. On the Operations page, in the Logging and Reporting section, click Usage analysis processing.

  3. On the Usage Analysis Processing page, in the Logging Settings section, select the Enable logging check box.

  4. In the Log file location box, accept the default path for the log file, or type a new path.

  5. In the Number of log files to create box, type a value for the number of log files to keep per Web application. When the specified number of log files is reached, no more files are created until some are deleted.

  6. If you want to enable usage analysis processing on Web server computers: in the Processing Settings section, select the Enable usage analysis processing check box. Specify the time each day to process usage analysis data by using the Start and End lists.

  7. Click OK.