How should we track usage of various tools?

[Shane Curcuru <as...@shanecurcuru.org>]

As we start building parts of whimsy that are becoming key parts of
organizational processes - like PMC updates - should we start tracking
actual usage of various tools to see 1) which tools are widely used, and
should be managed more carefully, and 2) tools that aren't used but
might be valuable if we told users about them.

It would be simple to add Google Analytics to most tools in
whimsy/asf/themes, but I'm wondering if we need that when we already
have server logs that show what tools are being used.

Is there enough data in existing server logs to be worth setting up a
page to analyze them?  Besides usage frequency, what else would be
interesting to be able to analyze?

- If user is a member, committer, or other (when known)

- How the user got to that tool (i.e. where else on *.a.o websites are
people finding out about the tool?)

- If a user used the related tools listings to find and use other tools.

- Whenever 500 errors are reported (since that usually means we need to
fix something!)


-- 

- Shane
  https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources

Re: How should we track usage of various tools?

["John D. Ament" <jo...@apache.org>]

Since most whimsy tools require a login, is it wrong for us to track the
actual user name?  Or should we maintain our own internal RUM database?
Action tracking events are generally not that complicated.

For conversion, since we have paths, it should be easy enough to track who
was doing what in the tool, even down to the PMC/Podling in the case of
roster.

John

On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 6:31 AM Shane Curcuru <as...@shanecurcuru.org> wrote:

> As we start building parts of whimsy that are becoming key parts of
> organizational processes - like PMC updates - should we start tracking
> actual usage of various tools to see 1) which tools are widely used, and
> should be managed more carefully, and 2) tools that aren't used but
> might be valuable if we told users about them.
>
> It would be simple to add Google Analytics to most tools in
> whimsy/asf/themes, but I'm wondering if we need that when we already
> have server logs that show what tools are being used.
>
> Is there enough data in existing server logs to be worth setting up a
> page to analyze them?  Besides usage frequency, what else would be
> interesting to be able to analyze?
>
> - If user is a member, committer, or other (when known)
>
> - How the user got to that tool (i.e. where else on *.a.o websites are
> people finding out about the tool?)
>
> - If a user used the related tools listings to find and use other tools.
>
> - Whenever 500 errors are reported (since that usually means we need to
> fix something!)
>
>
> --
>
> - Shane
>   https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources
>