Adagio has developed a new module to provide Pentaho Community Edition users with a method for analyzing user related performance issues and finding ways to improve user engagement. The Pentaho Enterprise Edition includes, or allows the installation of, a set of tools that can be used to analyze audit trails of the platform called “Pentaho Operations Mart.” This set of tools provides the ability to analyze the number of times each user enters the platform, the number of reports they execute and the associated execution times. It can also be used to analyze who runs a report and when. These kind of insights allow teams to anticipate performance problems and take timely action to prevent them and detect what aspects of the platform or which users may need additional training or where user experience may need to be improved. Enterprise Edition clients use the Pentaho Operations Mart for the following:
Audit
- Who is accessing the platform?
- How many times do they access it and for how long?
- Which reports is each user using?
- Which reports take longer to run and which ones have errors?
- What are the most used reports?
Resource Planning
- When is the best time to coordinate the execution of an upload process?
- How has the number of users and the volume of use changed compared to previous periods?
Troubleshooting performance problems
- What report was being executed at the time a performance degradation was detected?
- Which users were accessing the platform?
Pentaho User Engagement and Platform Use Stats for Pentaho Community Edition
Unfortunately, the Operation Mart set of tools is not available in the Community Edition of Pentaho. Therefore, Adagio developed an audit analysis module that we call “Pentaho User Engagement and Platform Use Stats.”
The idea was to build an analysis module with a functionality like the “Pentaho Operations Mart” by taking the information included in the Pentaho audit table (pro-audit table) and building a data-mart to analyze the use of the platform.
As we used this component with several clients, we improved and extended its functionality to include information that is not contained in the audit table. For example, extensions have been developed for:
- Obtaining user information from an LDAP directory
- Obtaining information from Pentaho, e.g. roles assigned by a user
- Integrating Excel spreadsheet information to complement user data, such as the organization to which the user belongs or email (data that cannot be entered in the Pentaho user creation form)
- Adding complementary data to the definition of objects (e.g. user approver of the data)
Components of the Pentaho User Engagement and Platform Stats Module
Our module contains the following components:
- An upload process that takes the pro-audit information and complements it with more information
- An analysis cube that allows free reports where relevant information is included
- Platform access audit
- Audit of execution of reports, dashboards, analysis
- Audit of execution times of reports, dashboards, analysis or relevant dimensions such as: time, users (roles, extended data), objects (type, name), directories, etc.
- A set of predefined dashboards
- Solution usage statistics
- Use of the solution component
- Use of the solution by section / organism
- Use of the solution by user
- Users dropout detection
Security for the Pentaho Community Edition User Engagement and Platform Stats Module
Access roles to the analytical module are defined to allow better control. At the cube level two roles are specified (auditor and administrator) both of which can perform analysis.
At the Dashboard level, access roles are defined according to the client’s needs. In particular, the control panel “use of the solution by user” has been designed to determine what each user can see with the content filtered so that only information relevant to the user who executes the report is displayed.
Data load of our Pentaho Community Edition Analytics
The data load is incremental to minimize the impact of the loading process on the use of the platform. The execution of the charging process is scheduled according to the needs of the client using the Pentaho scheduler and a load is usually run at night.
Use of the Pentaho Community Edition User Engagement and Platform Stats Module
Users can access the information contained in the module according to the permissions they have. In the case of the cube, the user must have an auditor or administrator role. In the case of Dashboards, the user accesses only the Dashboards available for their role.
if you would like to see a demo of this tool or have other questions about Pentaho or need additional Pentaho resources on your team, please get in touch with one of our Pentaho experts and we can schedule time to talk about your specific project or needs.
Examples of Dashboards
Here are some screenshots of the Dashboards.
