Usage Analysis Processing

One of the fairly overlooked items in WSS 3.0 and MOSS is the ability to access reports on site usage and other useful items such as broken links, slow pages, etc. By default this capability is not turned on in WSS or MOSS. If your organization wants to be able to quickly see statistics for SharePoint site usage, then Usage Analysis Processing is a good place to start. Another option available is Google Analytics, which works well also.



To set up UAP, log into the Central Administration page and under Logging and Reporting click on Usage analysis processing. On this page there are two sections, one for logging settings and one for processing settings. Under loggin settings, check the checkbox to enable logging and you can change the location of the log file (which by default is the LOGS folder in the 12 hive.) You can also set the number of log files to create as long as it is between 1 and 30.



Under processing settings, check the checkbox for enable usage analysis processing and then set the time range that you want the server to do processing. This should be a time frame when the server is less busy as the processing will slow down the web server. Click the Ok button and that is all there is to it. You will probably need to wait a day or two before you will start getting usage reports.



To access the reports, you can use SharePoint Designer by opening the site you want the stats for and clicking on Site and then Reports. You can get reports for Files, Problems, Usage, and more.



For more information about UAP and where the files reside check out this article.