TechTips - How to Get a Quick Metrics for Your SharePoint 2007 Website's Usage

SharePoint 2007 websites have a handy built in function that allows you to view some really great metrics about your websites usage. These metrics aren't all inclusive by any means but they do offer a brief overview of some good site usage details. The best part is that you don't have to set it up, SharePoint 2007 websites collect this data by default and anyone with Admin rights can see the data that is always readily available. In this guide I will explain to you a little more in-depth what details are stored in this website usage log and also how to find the data from the SharePoint 2007 admin console.

The Site Collection usage summary page is where SharePoint 2007 websites store some simplistic metrics that can be very handy for some quick insight into how your webpage is being used. The Site Collection usage summary report gives you three metrics to look at, Storage, Users and Activity. Each section has a small amount of data that to me is really useful for weekly and monthly reports on each website. I think that any organization that wants to keep track of some simple metrics between large updates would find this page useful.

The Storage portion of the metrics simply shows you how big your content database storage is, it shows the amount used by discussion posts and the amount of data storage you have left available to your website (if this applies, for my sites it doesn't they are allowed unlimited space).

The Users section simply lists the number of users you have subscribed to your site. This is always a helpful metric when you are trying to get more members to join your site. If you can show a weekly increase in this metric then you will know that your site is gaining popularity. This is one of the metrics my users like the most and brag about as often as they can.

The Activity section is another highly sought after metric for my users, they like to see the number of page hits their site is getting, again the more they get the better they believe their site to be doing. This section also offers recent bandwidth usage, this doesn't mean much to my users since they get unlimited bandwidth usage, but some businesses might find this useful if they have to pay for bandwidth usage.

So now you know what you will find on the Site Collection usage summary page, to get to the report page follow these steps:

1. Open your SharePoint 2007 Website

2. Click on Login (if you aren't logged in already by default)

3. Click on Site Actions (will only appear if you have admin rights to this SharePoint 2007 website)

4. Click Site Settings

5. Click Usage Summary (Under Site Collection Administration Section)

That is all there is to getting to the page that will display all of the above metrics I talked about. You can simply create your report with the metrics or just keep them in mind if you ever need to justify your SharePoint 2007 website. You can say yes this site is useful and we have 500 members, 75000 page hits, etc...to show that the site is well used and growing.

I hope this helps you to get to the Site Collection Usage Summary page and that the information is useful and maybe I clarified it a bit more for you.