Auditing User Usage - to minimize the no.of user licences

[ryan]

Is there any way to check how long (let say hours or days) a particular active user is using TM1?

Thanks in advance.

[Olivier]

I am monitoring the concurrent accesses on my server by running a process which check the "}ClientProperties" cube and look for the "Status" value = Active.
User connected would have a status of "Active" in the "}ClientProperties" cube while they are connected.

The process is set in a chore that runs by schedule every hour.
I save the "Active" count in a monitor cube so we get a visibility of the number of concurrent accesses from an active form report.

I am mainly after the number of concurrent users connected not really the duration of the connections so it does the trick for me.



Hope this helps,

[winsonlee]

isn't cognos tm1 uses name license ? as long as the user require to use it, this user require one license doesnt matter how long this user is using.

[Alan Kirk]

isn't cognos tm1 uses name license ? as long as the user require to use it, this user require one license doesnt matter how long this user is using.

If you have some users who log in (say) once a month to run a report, you're going to be far better off setting up an automated method of "pushing" a static report to them than using up a rather expensive user licence for all of the TM1 functionality that they'll never use. The licence applies to the use of the system, not to the use of data which is taken from the system.

(Though I hope that in saying that I haven't given Iboglix any ideas...)

[winsonlee]

when cube logging is enabled on }ClientProperties, i would thought that i should be able to find some entries on the transaction log for STATUS. But somehow i couldn't find any. Do you know if this is suppose to be the case ?

[Olivier]

isn't cognos tm1 uses name license ?

There are still some old licence agreement that have allowed customers from the days prior to Iboglix to keep the old concurrent licence schema...

In our case we use 9.4 with 50 concurrent licence hence the monitoring of concurrent user access to ensure we stay in the boundaries...

[lotsaram]

when cube logging is enabled on }ClientProperties, i would thought that i should be able to find some entries on the transaction log for STATUS. But somehow i couldn't find any. Do you know if this is suppose to be the case ?

You also need to set a value for ClientPropertiesSyncInterval in tm1s.cfg otherwise active status is never written to the cube.

[Martin Ryan]

The licence applies to the use of the system, not to the use of data which is taken from the system.

(Though I hope that in saying that I haven't given Iboglix any ideas...)

At least that's currently the case in TM1. There are some licences in BI for people who get pushed static pdf files. I think they're called Consumers.

[declanr]

I'm not sure if it still exists for 9.4 but in 9.1 there used to be a parameter you could put in place to block you from exceeding a certain number of concurrent users...

I can't quite remember the parameter but I do remember that where I did work at the time it was set at 20... which obviously allowed 60 simultaneous log-ons.
The thing to watch out for was the users who were allowed multiple ports (after I took over that went down to no-one except myself )

[Steve Vincent]

First up can we please try to keep this thread on auditing user usage rather than contract agreements? Its well known that nearly every customer of Applix/Cognos/IBM has a different agreement and it doesn't add anything to winsonlee's question, thanks [/admin hat]

when cube logging is enabled on }ClientProperties, i would thought that i should be able to find some entries on the transaction log for STATUS. But somehow i couldn't find any. Do you know if this is suppose to be the case ?

You also need to set a value for ClientPropertiesSyncInterval in tm1s.cfg otherwise active status is never written to the cube.

Assuming you have that parameter set also, there is no reason why the logs can't be used to do this. It's exactly how i record usage, but it is a bespoke solution for our set up. The basic principle is we log user activity and once a week run a PERL script to search the logs for the relevant lines of activity. That is output to a file which is then imported via TI to a cube. Not only does it help looking at concurrent usage (not just a license concern but also architecture capability) but it can also track when a user last logged in. Can also be used to estimate usage by comparing the in/out times to work out hours used / out of hours log ins etc.

Its not fool proof tho - we only hold data at 30 min snapshots. A user can log in for 5 mins, log out and avoid being picked up in the 30 min window (shows a +1 and -1 so gets cancelled out). Obviously that can be solved by a smaller logging window but at the expense of bigger cube data. Would depend on your situation as to what suits best.

[winsonlee]

when you mention logging user activity, is it found on the transaction log ?

First up can we please try to keep this thread on auditing user usage rather than contract agreements? Its well known that nearly every customer of Applix/Cognos/IBM has a different agreement and it doesn't add anything to winsonlee's question, thanks [/admin hat]

when cube logging is enabled on }ClientProperties, i would thought that i should be able to find some entries on the transaction log for STATUS. But somehow i couldn't find any. Do you know if this is suppose to be the case ?

You also need to set a value for ClientPropertiesSyncInterval in tm1s.cfg otherwise active status is never written to the cube.

Assuming you have that parameter set also, there is no reason why the logs can't be used to do this. It's exactly how i record usage, but it is a bespoke solution for our set up. The basic principle is we log user activity and once a week run a PERL script to search the logs for the relevant lines of activity. That is output to a file which is then imported via TI to a cube. Not only does it help looking at concurrent usage (not just a license concern but also architecture capability) but it can also track when a user last logged in. Can also be used to estimate usage by comparing the in/out times to work out hours used / out of hours log ins etc.

Its not fool proof tho - we only hold data at 30 min snapshots. A user can log in for 5 mins, log out and avoid being picked up in the 30 min window (shows a +1 and -1 so gets cancelled out). Obviously that can be solved by a smaller logging window but at the expense of bigger cube data. Would depend on your situation as to what suits best.

[Steve Vincent]

If the cube logging is turned on and the parameter lotsaram mentioned is correct, yes. They should look similar to below;

Code: Select all

"","20120530092515","20120530092515",*,"S","ACTIVE","","}ClientProperties","Steve.Vincent","STATUS",""
"","20120530092515","20120530092515",*,"S","","ACTIVE","}ClientProperties","Steve.Vincent","STATUS",""

[winsonlee]

correct me if i am wrong, the ClientPropertiesSyncInterval parameter is used to trigger the logging by certain interval and not by changes made on the STATUS cell in }ClientProperties ?
normally how a cube logging works is it will log as an entry on the log file when the cell is changed from "" to "Active" and and it will log again when the cell is change from "Active" to "".

[lotsaram]

the ClientPropertiesSyncInterval parameter is used to trigger the logging by certain interval and not by changes made on the STATUS cell in }ClientProperties ?
normally how a cube logging works is it will log as an entry on the log file when the cell is changed from "" to "Active" and and it will log again when the cell is change from "Active" to "".

correct me if i am wrong

OK. But I'll let the TM1 documentation speak for me which it seems you didn't bother to consult
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocente ... erval.html
Unless you have a positive integer value assigned to this parameter then the }ClientProperties cube won't get updated for the ACTIVE flag at all and hence nothing will appear in the transaction log regardless of whether logging is on or off for the cube.