I am very pleased to announce the launch of a market-leading data collection capability for Webtrends. The addition of this API to our capabilities is another example of why Webtrends is the most powerful, open and elegant solution in the industry.

Keeping with our commitment to gather your feedback and deliver the most relevant of tools, we are making this new capability available in Beta for all of our customers and partners to use now.  Please help us help you by getting involved today. Push the limits! Get creative! Then let us know where we can improve on the capabilities. We will continue to evolve the API. Anything that connects to the internet is fair game.

As you, our customers, continue to expand your online presence beyond your web sites, it is our responsibility to grow our own measurement capabilities ahead of your evolving needs. Our data collection API is a critical addition to your arsenal of tools for collecting new data. The primary purpose for the API is to track behavior across various media that access the internet where traditional site tagging isn’t possible or an optimal fit.

Interested in more details? A full overview is available on our Developer Network. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or to explore opportunities to leverage this exciting new capability.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is a great platform for an organization that needs to roll out an intranet with very little effort because MOSS offers an easy way to organize content based on a company’s organization model.

However, what many companies found was while it was easy to implement the website, trying to get accurate analytics on a MOSS portal was difficult, if not impossible.  Log file analytics yielded inaccurate results and advanced JavaScript tracking was nearly impossible for most organizations due to the complexity of the SharePoint code.  If your organization did not have a C# programmer with SharePoint Portal experience, you were out of luck.

After hearing this concern again and again, we decided there had to be a better way and we were going to find it. The current analytics experience was difficult and frustrating – this was unacceptable.  With this goal in mind, my colleague Michael Love and I researched the issue and came up with a simple solution: directly interact with the SharePoint Portal template structure.  The data is already there on the page; let’s use it.  Just as the Webtrends SmartSource Data Collector code pulls data like refers automatically, this altered code allows us to pull details about the portal experience automatically from the SharePoint templates.

So exactly how much development is required?  This is the best part; the effort involved in implementing the code is minimal.  No C# coding required.  No major template modifications are required.  Your developers should be able to apply the code and get you up and running in minutes.  Webtrends will provide you with the code you need to apply to MOSS 2007 to make this work.  Webtrends will do the rest.  We’ll set up the reporting and help you test the data output.

How rich is the data?  Using this methodology we can collect data on Content Areas, overall site traffic based on a Breadcrumb drilldown report, document tracking, Webpart views, onsite search results (including found vs. not found) and all of the standard reports you expect out of Webtrends Analytics.

The document reporting is probably my favorite functionality.  We can build a report that will track document interaction within a document library including check-outs, downloads, emails directly from SharePoint and a number of other options.  The best part is you get you pick the standard document interactions you want to track.  User level reporting is also available.  If you have an external list of departments that users belong to, we can create a report that will allow you to see activity based on departments.

How do I get it? If you are interested in this offering – touch base with your account manager for implementation details and pricing.

This is just the first step.  Webtrends is serious about getting you the data you need and giving you direct access to you.  Many of you saw our press release about integrating with WebSphere Portal.  The integration will be equally easy, giving step by step guidance on how to track your WebSphere Portal with minimal effort.

It’s time to make things easy!

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is a great platform for an organization that needs to roll out an intranet with very little effort because MOSS offers an easy way to organize content based on a company’s organization model.

However, what many companies found was while it was easy to implement the website, trying to get accurate analytics on a MOSS portal was difficult, if not impossible.  Log file analytics yielded inaccurate results and advanced JavaScript tracking was nearly impossible for most organizations due to the complexity of the SharePoint code.  If your organization did not have a C# programmer with SharePoint Portal experience, you were out of luck.

After hearing this concern again and again, we decided there had to be a better way and we were going to find it. The current analytics experience was difficult and frustrating – this was unacceptable.  With this goal in mind, my colleague Michael Love and I researched the issue and came up with a simple solution: directly interact with the SharePoint Portal template structure.  The data is already there on the page; let’s use it.  Just as the Webtrends SmartSource Data Collector code pulls data like refers automatically, this altered code allows us to pull details about the portal experience automatically from the SharePoint templates.

So exactly how much development is required?  This is the best part; the effort involved in implementing the code is minimal.  No C# coding required.  No major template modifications are required.  Your developers should be able to apply the code and get you up and running in minutes.  Webtrends will provide you with the code you need to apply to MOSS 2007 to make this work.  Webtrends will do the rest.  We’ll set up the reporting and help you test the data output.

How rich is the data?  Using this methodology we can collect data on Content Areas, overall site traffic based on a Breadcrumb drilldown report, document tracking, Webpart views, onsite search results (including found vs. not found) and all of the standard reports you expect out of Webtrends Analytics.

The document reporting is probably my favorite functionality.  We can build a report that will track document interaction within a document library including check-outs, downloads, emails directly from SharePoint and a number of other options.  The best part is you get you pick the standard document interactions you want to track.  User level reporting is also available.  If you have an external list of departments that users belong to, we can create a report that will allow you to see activity based on departments.

How do I get it? If you are interested in this offering – touch base with your account manager for implementation details and pricing.

This is just the first step.  Webtrends is serious about getting you the data you need and giving you direct access to you.  Many of you saw our press release about integrating with WebSphere Portal.  The integration will be equally easy, giving step by step guidance on how to track your WebSphere Portal with minimal effort.

It’s time to make things easy!

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is a great platform for an organization that needs to roll out an intranet with very little effort because MOSS offers an easy way to organize content based on a company’s organization model.

However, what many companies found was while it was easy to implement the website, trying to get accurate analytics on a MOSS portal was difficult, if not impossible.  Log file analytics yielded inaccurate results and advanced JavaScript tracking was nearly impossible for most organizations due to the complexity of the SharePoint code.  If your organization did not have a C# programmer with SharePoint Portal experience, you were out of luck.

After hearing this concern again and again, we decided there had to be a better way and we were going to find it. The current analytics experience was difficult and frustrating – this was unacceptable.  With this goal in mind, my colleague Michael Love and I researched the issue and came up with a simple solution: directly interact with the SharePoint Portal template structure.  The data is already there on the page; let’s use it.  Just as the Webtrends SmartSource Data Collector code pulls data like refers automatically, this altered code allows us to pull details about the portal experience automatically from the SharePoint templates.

So exactly how much development is required?  This is the best part; the effort involved in implementing the code is minimal.  No C# coding required.  No major template modifications are required.  Your developers should be able to apply the code and get you up and running in minutes.  Webtrends will provide you with the code you need to apply to MOSS 2007 to make this work.  Webtrends will do the rest.  We’ll set up the reporting and help you test the data output.

How rich is the data?  Using this methodology we can collect data on Content Areas, overall site traffic based on a Breadcrumb drilldown report, document tracking, Webpart views, onsite search results (including found vs. not found) and all of the standard reports you expect out of Webtrends Analytics.

The document reporting is probably my favorite functionality.  We can build a report that will track document interaction within a document library including check-outs, downloads, emails directly from SharePoint and a number of other options.  The best part is you get you pick the standard document interactions you want to track.  User level reporting is also available.  If you have an external list of departments that users belong to, we can create a report that will allow you to see activity based on departments.

How do I get it? If you are interested in this offering – touch base with your account manager for implementation details and pricing.

This is just the first step.  Webtrends is serious about getting you the data you need and giving you direct access to you.  Many of you saw our press release about integrating with WebSphere Portal.  The integration will be equally easy, giving step by step guidance on how to track your WebSphere Portal with minimal effort.

It’s time to make things easy!

Accessing the logging script and making calls to DCSMultiTrack from AJAX should be very simple since you are likely using JavaScript already to handle user interactions, build your XHTML controls, and utilize XMLHttpRequest. Even if you are using a different scripting language such as VBScript you can still make a call to a JavaScript function in much the same way you would from within JavaScript.

If you wanted to make the deployment of your AJAX ‘tagging’ more efficient rather than add a call to every object action you want to track you may consider adding it into your event handler function to your AJAX application that will automatically make calls to DCSMultiTrack when triggered:

Button1.onclick = updateData()
…
function updateData(event, param) {
var myurl = www.domain.com/service/ajax.aspx

http.open(”GET”, myurl + “?id=” + escape(param), true);
http.onreadystatechange = useHttpResponse();
DCSMultiTrack(”DCSURI”,”/ajax/menu/”+event.target+”/”event.type,”DCSext.param”,”param”)
http.send(null);

}

Here I have used the example of on click event handler but it could just add the call within a wrapped up function and attach this to a rootElement event handler. The issue there then becomes that you will be tracking all user interactions so what do you start passing as page URL’s and other parameters just to say represent a mouse drag.

Should the handler be attached to all events enabling you to collect information on any and every interaction? Or prehaps limited only to duistinct content loads/views within the applet? And what should you be passing as parameters? Why not join us to discuss this at Engage 2009 in our Workgroup.

With broadband now common place in the home, Web Developers are using more and more Rich Media content in their websites. The sinus and flowing interfaces of applications built in technologies such as AJAX, Flash, and SilverLight are replacing ‘blocky’ single state HTML pages. How do we track visitors in these new technologies, and how will we redefine the page view to reflect these fluid interactions?

Part I: Tracking

Let us first address the fundamental problem of issuing logging requests from the client side to our SDC server (web server log files will be no use to us here) from within these technologies, as it is perhaps the most straight forward of the two questions we will address here.

The gap we must bridge is that between our application and the WebTrends logging JavaScript, our end goal being a call to the DCSMultiTrack function… used to trigger subsequent logging requests to an SDC server so that we might capture events that occur after the initial logging request that is made by the script when a page is loaded. These include client-side mouse events (clicks on links), form events, and interaction with embedded objects such as our rich media applications.

The function takes paired values as arguments:

	dcsMultiTrack('name1','value1','name2','value2',...)

All arguments are JavaScript strings which must be enclosed in quotes. The first part of the pair is the parameter name which must be of the form ‘object.name’ where ‘object’ is the name of one of three pre-defined custom objects: WT, DCS, DCSext. And ‘name’ – The property name of the custom object (for WT and DCS these are reserved names). The second part of the pair is the parameter value.
Note the all initial parameter assignments from the initial page load remain unchanged in the triggered request unless overridden by parameter values passed to DCSMultiTrack.

DCSMultiTrack will act as a bridge for us between our Web technology and JavaScript since most client side languages can utilize or make calls to JavaScript functions directly or indirectly. What we record with these DCSMultiTrack requests however we must define ourselves. How do we designate page views and parameter values that will give us a wide enough data set to fully understand how our visitors navigate these technologies.

However it is sometimes the case that from some technologies we are unable to make a call to JavaScript or in some environments even execute JavaScript. One example of this would be RSS feeds where sites content or some other kind of informational stream is downloaded directly from a web server into desktop or third party web based aggregator. We will need to combine a variety of different technologies and reporting approaches to give us encompassing view of RSS utilization, from subscription to consumption.

When do I make my Send call? In call these Rich Media Technologys yes we can make logging requests but when? And what do we put in them? What consitutes as a page view in an interface with no pages. This is a question we will attempt to answer at our Engage 09 Workgroup.