Tracking Active Users by Module in PTC ThingWorx: Daily and Monthly Insights

[Siddharth_Jhs]

Hi ThingWorx Community,

I hope you're all doing well! I'm looking for guidance on how to track active users within PTC ThingWorx, both on a daily and monthly basis, broken down by specific modules. My application consists of five modules, each utilized by distinct team groups, and I'd like to understand the best way to capture and analyze the volume of active users per module.

Thank you in advance for your insights and support! Your help is much appreciated.

Best Regards,

Sid

[VladimirRosu]

Hi @Siddharth_Jhs ,

It all starts with how you define what an "active user per module" is.

It's not a easy exercise and you need to own that definition: some people say it is a page access, others say it's the fact an user stayed for at least 2 minutes in the page, others say it's the fact that the user performed a specific action or set of actions in the page (clicked some buttons).

After you define that you can go to implementation. I used the last definition in the past in a personal project, and to track that, on the ServiceInvokeCompleted I added a call to add a Stream entry (input: Module name). Once you have a table with the data you need to understand your usage you can then create any sort of dashboard that's needed (eg: daily/weekly/monthly access, rate of increase etc.). Again here, it starts on what exactly are your requirements.

[Siddharth_Jhs]

Thanks @VladimirRosu for your reply. In my case client is expecting active users as the total number of users currently using particular module. As you said atleast 2 mins access the application even they don't do anything. 

[vnamboodheri]

Hello @Siddharth_Jhs,

It looks like you have some responses from some community members. If any of these replies helped you solve your question please mark the appropriate reply as the Accepted Solution. 

Of course, if you have more to share on your issue, please let the Community know so other community members can continue to help you.

Thanks,
Vivek N.
Community Moderation Team.

[Constantine]

Hello Sid,

If you want to do it right, you should integrate something like Matomo into your mashups -- it will collect information about what your users are doing, and will provide you dashboards and reports. This integration won't be trivial, but this is the most sustainable long-term solution. You'd need to check with your IT department to learn what they use for such "marketing analytics".

If you want to do it quick and dirty, you can analyze access logs from your webserver. You should find mashup names and user names there. With a bit of elbow grease you'll be able to collect reliable stats who used what and when.

And of course you can build a rudimentary in-house analytics by adding a row into some ThingWorx Stream every time a user opens one of your five "module homepage" mashups. Then you can create a "reporting" mashup, which would query this Stream and display required stats. If you are familiar with ThingWorx, this solution would likely be the fastest to implement, but you'd need to maintain it yourself.

/ Constantine