WebMetrix – How To’s

How to Filter Results Down to My Site

Many of the sites hosted by Web Services end up being grouped together under what Angelfish refers to as “Profiles”. We have chosen to implement each host name as  Profile due, in part, to a limited number of profiles as well as to provide convenient roll-up information about things like “www.purdue.edu”. Unfortunately, this means when trying to look at results for a site within this larger collection, you need to do some filtering.

  1. Start with the Profile you are interested in such as “www.purdue.edu” and select that from the drop down to the upper right
  2. Make sure that the date range is no larger than a week (for the time being)
  3. Select the type of report you want from the left side bar:
    1. Content > Content Pages > Pages
    2. IT Reports > Downloads > Downloads
    3. etc.
  4. Enter a pattern into the filter box (just after Containing across the row between the graph and the report output)
  5. Adjust the date range as appropriate

The filter pattern is a regular expression but you can put in a simple match string such as “/itap/webservices”. You can also change “Containing” to “Excluding” if that is more useful to you.

Note that while the report data and  pie chart will change to reflect your filter, the overview and graph at the top will not.

How to Get Rid of F5 and Nagios Monitor Hits

As part of the background functioning and monitoring of our web servers, there is periodic traffic sent by the F5 load balancers and by our Nagios monitor that you may want to filter out of your reports.  There are two ways to achieve this, depending on what report you are looking at.

Filter by IP Address

If the report you are viewing is primarily based on IP address (for example, Traffic > Visit Details > IP Addresses), filtering by IP address will make more sense. After your initial report is displayed:

  1. In the report bar (below the overview graph and above the report) change “Containing” to “Excluding”
  2. Enter “10.10.0.[2-9]|128.210.7.153”
  3. Press Enter

This is a regular expression that matches the following addresses:

  • 10.10.0.2
  • 10.10.0.3
  • 10.10.0.4
  • 10.10.0.5
  • 10.10.0.6
  • 10.10.0.7
  • 10.10.0.8
  • 10.10.0.9
  • 128.210.7.153

The first set of them are the possible values for the F5 devices (they change from generation to generation) and the last is the current value of Web Services Nagios monitor.

Filter by File or Directory Name

If the report you are viewing is primarily based on file or directory name (such as Content > Content Pages > Pages), filtering by File or Directory will make more sense. After your initial report is displayed:

  1. In the report bar (below the overview graph and above the report) change “Containing” to “Excluding”
  2. Enter “/monitor”
  3. Press Enter

How to Get File Download Counts

Select the report (from the left side bar) “IT Reports > Downloads > Downloads”. Downloads are currently defined to be the following file extensions:

  • .bz
  • .bz2
  • .doc
  • .docx
  • .exe
  • .gz
  • .mp3
  • .mp4
  • .pdf
  • .ppt
  • .pptx
  • .tar
  • .tgz
  • .xls
  • .xlsx
  • .z
  • .zip

You may request that we add other types by contacting Web Services to open a ticket.

Note that the new file type will only be counted as a download moving forward and not for older logs.

How to Safely Get Long Time Range Reports

While it is true that the Webmetrix server is a large machine (see Server Specifications here), it is dealing with large quantities of data and it can easily be asked to generate a report that takes longer than a browser is willing to wait. Over the years, we have come up with a few techniques to safely get reports for long time ranges (more than a few months).

Before you begin, please narrow your report down as far as possible using the various report types and “Containing” or “Excluding” filters. This can make all the difference between success and failure.

Note: If you do request a report that takes too long to run and your browser times out, please wait before trying to submit a new one (even if smaller). The server is likely still busy generating the report you asked for and doesn’t know that the browser has given up. If you ask for another large report immediately, you will be fighting with yourself and the new report will likely timeout as well.

After you have narrowed the report down to the interesting result slowly increase the time/date range (upper right) and monitor how long the report seems to take to generate. In most cases, you should be able to get out to three months safely. For smaller profiles or well filtered reports, you might get out to six or more months without difficulty. Once you find a reasonable size, generate your report using that range and capture your results. Then use the Prev and Next buttons below the time/date range to move to the next interval, and then the next.

How to Download Report Results

After you have the report defined, you can download the report for further processing (such as in Excel) using the “Export” button to the right of the bar between the overview graph and the report. You may choose to download all rows or just those that are currently shown, and you may choose from the following formats:

Downloadable Report Formats
Format Name Definition
CSV Comma Separated Value – Suitable for import into Excel
TSV Tab Separated Value – Suitable for import into Excel
JSON JavaScript Object Notation – Suitable for processing by languages that support JSON
XML eXtensible Markup Language – Suitable for processing by languages that support XML