Net Biscuits - Reporting - Getting Started Guide V1.3

Version: 1.3 2010/04/13

Netbiscuits – Reporting Getting Started Guide

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The information in this document has been carefully checked and can be considered reliable. Nevertheless, no guarantee can be given for the accuracy of the information in this document. In particular, no pledge can be given as to the suitability of the products described here for specific purposes. Netbiscuits retains the right to alter the products and product information specified here. Netbiscuits accepts no liability from events arising from the usage of the products described here. Issue of this document is not accompanied by licenses entitling you to use the listed products, nor products of Netbiscuits or of other companies.

Date Editor Comment Version

2009-07-29 CR Initial Draft 0.1

2009-08-04 CR Completed “Send Coupon Messages” 0.2

3 / 24 © 2010 Netbiscuits GmbH

Netbiscuits – Reporting |Getting Started Guide

Purpose of this document

Table of contents page

1 Purpose of this document ........................................................................................................ 4

2 Overview ................................................................................................................................. 4

3 Reports ................................................................................................................................... 4

3.1 Content ..................................................................................................................................................... 5

3.2 Date and Time ........................................................................................................................................... 7

3.3 Visitor Systems .......................................................................................................................................... 8

3.4 Referrers ................................................................................................................................................. 12

3.5 Sessions ................................................................................................................................................... 13

3.5.1 Entry pages .................................................................................................................................. 13

3.5.2 Exit pages ..................................................................................................................................... 13

3.5.3 Paths through a page ................................................................................................................... 13

3.5.4 Session paths ............................................................................................................................... 14

3.5.5 Session pages ............................................................................................................................... 15

3.6 Single – page Summary ........................................................................................................................... 15

3.7 Log Detail ................................................................................................................................................ 16

4 The Reporting Toolbar ........................................................................................................... 16

4.1 Calendar .................................................................................................................................................. 17

4.2 Date Range .............................................................................................................................................. 18

4.3 Filter Options .......................................................................................................................................... 19

4.3.1 Filter classes ................................................................................................................................. 19

4.4 Printer Friendly ....................................................................................................................................... 21

5 Using the Tabs ....................................................................................................................... 21

5.1 Row Numbers ......................................................................................................................................... 21

5.2 Zoom Options ......................................................................................................................................... 21

5.2.1 Combining Zoom Options ............................................................................................................ 22

5.3 Export Tables .......................................................................................................................................... 23

5.4 Table Options .......................................................................................................................................... 23

6 Frequently Asked Questions .................................................................................................. 23

7 Getting Help .......................................................................................................................... 24



Purpose of this document

1 Purpose of this document The following instructions tell you how to derive maximum advantage from the Netbiscuits

Reporting tool.

It gives an overview over the Reporting Tool’s features and explains how to make use of

them. The guide assumes you have some knowledge about reporting of web pages, but it

does not assume you having knowledge about mobile web site reporting tools.

Therefore it explains some of the differences between reporting of web pages and mobile

web pages.

2 Overview The Netbiscuits Reporting provides with a view on the “Served Pages” for your applications

and media repository “Downloads”.

You can filter your statistics based on various criteria in order to analyze the surfing behavior

of your customers.

The Netbiscuits Reporting creates its statistics based on analyzing the server log files and

combining this data with the Netbiscuits device and carrier detection as well as with other

tools like IP-Geo location, etc.

This provides a view on all activities of all clients accessing the system including automated

bots and search engines.

The log files are imported and the reports are usually updated once per day between 1 – 5

AM UTC.

3 Reports To access the Netbiscuits Reporting log in your Netbiscuits account and click on “Reporting”

in the “MyAccount” Menu Bar. After Reporting has started up you will see a listing of

“Applications/Pages” (1).

On the first level your applications are listed as defined in your application dashboard.

Each entry is a link to drill-down to the page details in your application.

Next you have “Served Pages” (2), which shows the absolute number per application as well

as the percentage of total served pages, and “Visits” (3), indicating the number of individual

sessions accessing this application.

The initial view contains the complete range of data, because no filter rules are set initially.



Reports

This default view corresponds to the first entry in the left navigation; this is

“Applications/Pages”.

3.1 Content

Application/Pages:

This report shows the statistics for each application on the top level. You can drill-down to

subfolders of your application (esp. for custom applications) and to single pages.

Please note that the default page of an application, i.e. the page called without specifying a

page name e.g. calling http://m.mydomain.com/ is expressed as “default_page” in this view.

You may need to combine the Served-Pages for this “default_page” with the actual page

name e.g. “index.rbml” to get all activities on your default page.

Media Downloads:

This report shows downloads per folder in your media repository, i.e. Wallpapers, Videos,

Audios, Ringtones, etc.

Downloads are grouped by the upload file id. This id gets resolved to the media file name.

However, you can drill-down to its subfolder structure to see each delivered output format

(3gp, mp4, wmv, etc.) and their frequency. If you have deleted a media file in the Media

Repository the media name is not available and the upload file id is shown instead.

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Reports

Friendly URLs:

For every application you can set up a “Friendly URL” in the application settings. You will find

this “Friendly URL” here additionally to the “apps.netbiscuits.com” URL, that every

application has. The Served Pages are grouped by the friendly URL that has been called.

Server Responses

A list of server HTTP responses: Every report shows only HTTP 200 responses to ensure that

only “Served Pages” are counted.



Reports

This is the only Report that shows all “Server Responses” to give you the ability to monitor

errors or redirects in your applications.

3.2 Date and Time

Years/Months/Days:

Served Pages grouped by date and time: depending on the table that is displayed, you will be

shown the count of log file entries, grouped by years, months, days or hours of a day,

depending on the navigation entry you select. Initially the entries are grouped by years.

Days:

This is a view on all days within the selected range.

Day of Weeks:

Served Pages grouped by day of week, can be used to identify peeks of traffic.



Reports

Hour of Days:

Served Pages grouped by hour of day, can be used to identify peeks of access.

Table Options:

You may pick the “Table Options” tab in the table to get different views of the table

(diagrams and so on) or click the tab “Zoom Options”, select a zoom option and one of the

linked entries in the table to filter for single years, months or days. For more on these topics

and the other available tabs (“Export”), see the next sections.

3.3 Visitor Systems

Geographic Locations:

The IP-Addresses of the accessing systems are analyzed to determine the origin.

This process can be used in combination with the “Carriers” report.



Reports

In this view click on any country to drill-down to state/city level:



Reports

Spiders/Bots:

These are usually search engines or other automated procedures (bots) accessing the pages.

If a Spider/Bot accesses your application this will be counted as a “Served Page”. The entry

“(not a spider)” is the item you have to filter to see only “human requested” pages. To read

more about filtering reports see chapter 4 and 4.3.

Vendors/Devices:

In this view you get the accessing devices grouped by vendor.

Netbiscuits: these are caused by the simulator

Desktop browsers: the resolution is not very precise as the focus of Netbiscuits is on mobile

browsers.

Bots: The spiders and bots are not actual browsers.

Generic devices: for some devices it is not possible to detect the precise model version thus

a generic device is assigned.

All Devices:

This is the same as above, but listed as a flat list of all devices instead of grouping by vendor.



Reports

Carriers:

The carriers are grouped in this report by country.

Desktop browsers and Spiders/Bots are listed separately.

Unknown carriers are usually caused by desktop browsers or WLAN hotspots as well as any

undetected Spider/Bot activity.

All Carriers:

This is a flat view on all carriers without the grouping by country.



Reports

3.4 Referrers

Referrers:

Referrers are the web addresses that a user comes from to your page.

The referrer field is passed optionally by the browser, so it may not be present. Also internal

referrers, i.e. the user calling multiple pages within the same friendly URL are not tracked as

referrers.

Search Engines:

Detected search engines are listed with the activity they produce.

Search Phrases:

You may use these to get an impression of what are the search phrases that lead users from

search engines to your page.

Search Phrases by Search Engine:

This is an aggregated view on the previous two items.



Reports

3.5 Sessions

A session is a single visit to the site. This is: a single visitor requesting several pages and data

counts as single session.

Sessions are identified by a unique “jsessionid” generated by the Netbiscuits platform and

held in all interactions with the platform.

Also a timeout of 30 min is considered as well as a maximum session duration of 2 hours.

3.5.1 Entry pages

How many sessions did start on which page? This table informs you about the pages through

which users entered your sites.

It might be a good hint on which pages user remembered in their “favorites” list or which

they find by search engines.

3.5.2 Exit pages

Which pages are the last ones, users visited? These are pages on that a session ends. This

might by a hint for both: The page did not contain what users expected, or the page

contained all the information a user was looking for.

3.5.3 Paths through a page

The sequence of Pages a user clicks visiting you Site. Select a page by clicking it, an input field

“Page” appears. By clicking the “Show paths” button you open a window with detailed

information on from where (which page) the visitors came and where they went.



Reports

More detailed information on the pages that visitors came from and the pages that visitors

went to after visiting the selected page.

3.5.4 Session paths

This is a sophisticated view on the click-path within your application pages.

Using this view you can select a specific page and step-by-step track the number of users

branching to other pages or ending their session.



Reports

The session paths window lists how many sessions started on a single page. If you expand a

page by clicking the small “plus” corresponding to it, you get information on the next step on

the visitors’ paths. You get a path tree by expanding all pages on a path.

3.5.5 Session pages

Pages listed after count of sessions that tangent them. The page with the most visitor

sessions gets listed first.

The “events” count indicates the number of views the user had to that specific page.

This might be the same as the sessions if the users viewed each page only once or it can be

higher.

The time indicates the duration of the time spent on the specific page based on the duration

between pages within a session. Please note that the last page within a session has zero

duration.

3.6 Single – page Summary

This is a single view on most of the reports.

Because of the complexity of this report, it may take some time for the system to prepare

the data for display.



The Reporting Toolbar

3.7 Log Detail

A list of all available log file entries. Search yourself or export and use your own tool to

generate views or import into your own database.

You can modify the exported fields by changing the configuration in the table options.

If you want to have all fields you have to check all boxes.

You can also define the number of entries you want to export.

4 The Reporting Toolbar The reporting toolbar is located on top of your reporting view. There you find icons for

accessing the “Calendar” (1), “Date Range” (2), “Filter”(3) and “Printer Friendly” (4) tools.

If you select one of the options, it serves as filter for the data shown in the window below

the toolbar (5).

If a filter or date range was selected, it is shown in the window: the appropriate checkbox

(“Date Filter” or “Filter”) is checked (6). To see the unfiltered data without deleting the filter,

uncheck the appropriate checkbox and click on “Refresh” beside the “Filter” checkbox.

To see filtered data, set a filter: click the appropriate icon (3) and select a filter (details find

in the following sections), check the appropriate checkbox (if not preset) and click the

“Refresh” link (7): the filtered data will be shown.

The filter and date or calendar ranges and rules you provide are valid for all displayed

windows until deactivated by unchecking the appropriate checkboxes.




Which kinds of filters are possible, will be explained in detail in the next sections.

4.1 Calendar

The calendar filter tool can be accessed by clicking the appropriate button in the reporting

toolbar (1, picture above).

The calendar can be used to select a day: all log file entries for this day will be selected and

displayed. The days for which entries exist (in case not every day has entries) are marked by

red colored digits (1).

A selected date is marked red (2). You may only select dates for which data entries in the log

file exist, others are disabled.




4.2 Date Range

If you click the “Date Range” icon, the date range window opens.

Provide two dates: the log file entries that where collected in between these two dates will

be displayed.

The days that have associated traffic data are accentuated by red digits. Selected dates are

marked by red squares.

If you want to unselect the date range, just click the “SetMax” button (1). The maximum of

available data will be selected. The maximum available data might depend on operator

settings. Contact the Netbiscuits support team if in doubt.




4.3 Filter Options

A click on the “Filter” icon in the Reporting Toolbar opens a window where you may set

additional filters for the displayed data. Select the desired filter and click on the appropriate

“Add New Filter Item” link (1) to provide a new filter rule. An input window will open where

you may provide a name, a wildcard expression (something like “*day*” for all words or

names containing the letter combination day) or a regular expression for which is searched.

Select: “is” (2) if you like to be listed all entries containing the provided name or expression,

or select: “is NOT” (3) to get listed all entries that do not contain the provided letter

combination.

To activate or deactivate a filter rule, just check or uncheck the appropriate checkbox in

front of it (4). The items for which can be filtered are described in the following. Active filter

rules are valid for all table windows until deactivated by unchecking the appropriate

checkbox. The Edit and Delete (5) links are used to edit or delete the filter rule.

4.3.1 Filter classes

Application

Provide the name of your application or use “Media” for filtering media repository

downloads.

Carrier This field contains the name of the carrier preceded by the country, e.g. “US/Sprint Nextel”

Day of week

Filter for a day of the week. Selected will be: Log data entries that where recorded on the provided day.

Device

This field contains the name of the device preceded by the vendor, e.g. “Apple/iPhone”




Friendly URL

This field contains the server domain used. This filter is useful if you’d like to know, for example, how many times a specific one of your friendly URLs was requested by your web site users.

Geographic location

Enter the correct spelling of the land you’d like to filter for, followed by a slash or use a wildcard expression (“*” standing for everything). Examples for meaningful expressions would be: “United States/”, “Germany/” or “India/”.

Hour of day

Best use is wildcard expressions, say “3*”. It is not possible to use “3” or “3*pm” respectively.

Page

Best usage is as wildcard expression: “*index*” for example or “*index.rbml*” respectively.

Referrer

Referrers are the web addresses that a user comes from to your page. Internal referrers, i.e. links referring to the same server domain (friendly-URL) as of the filtered page are marked as such.

Search engine

This field contains the name of the search engines that were used to find your site. If you’d like to know which search engines (spiders) visited your page: these are listed as spiders in the section Referrer.

Search phrase

Which search phrase directed the user of a search engine to your page? If you review the Search Phrases report, this will tell you what visitors used in the search engine to find your site.

Server response

Servers do not only respond by sending the requested files, but a response code will be sent as well. The response codes are either send together with the requested files, if all went well and smooth, (code 200) or to indicate an error.

Sessions

Sessions or visits represent a sequence of requests to the platform originating from the same client.



Using the Tabs

In general this means that human users will start browsing your application from an entry page, navigate within the application to view some additional pages, and then leave the site either by selecting a link in your application or by other means.

Spider

Hits from search engine robots and other robots.

4.4 Printer Friendly

A window with printer friendly optimized output will open: only the statistics, without

navigation.

5 Using the Tabs For each window, there are four tabs available, which can be used to customize the data

view. The options of these tabs are explained in the following.

5.1 Row Numbers

Sort in ascending or descending order by clicking the columns headlines (marked red).

Click on an entry to zoom in on the entries details. For example: if you click on the year 2008

entry, you will get a table with a detailed entry for every month in the year 2008.

After clicking on the year 2008 entry in the table, the following window shows. As you can

see, the report is zoomed and shows data for “Date/time: 2008, 136 days”, this is because

you clicked 2008: you zoomed in on 2008.

5.2 Zoom Options

After you clicked the tab “Zoom options”, a dropdown list with the available zoom options

appears. To activate a zoom option, select one and click on one of the linked table entries.

The report will “zoom” on more detailed data that is available for the clicked entry: the entry

decides about the displayed data range (picture below), the selected option decides about

the view.

For example, you might select “days” as option in the dropdown list. If you then select one

of the month by clicking it, you get a list of the amounts of log file entries for every day in

the month that has log file entries at all.

Days for which the amount equals zero are deleted automatically from the view, to enhance

clear arrangement.



Using the Tabs

5.2.1 Combining Zoom Options

To combine more than one zoom option, this is, to activate more than one filter, you can

select more than one zoom option by first selecting the most general one, then the less

general and at last the most special one.

The result of combined filters (zoom options) is shown in the table.

From the table “Content” the Pages/directories view was selected and then a filter added, so

that the entries for every single file type for the 17/Mar/2008 are listed.

First click on the Content entry in the navigation, then select the subsection

“Pages/directories” then click…

Add filters by clicking one of the linked entries listed in the table (here the only one is “JPG”)

or zoom to another report and click the appropriate entry there.

Remove filters by changing to another table view.



Frequently Asked Questions

5.3 Export Tables

Export the results of combined filtering that already are in the table as a CSV file.

Please note that the fields in the CSV file and the number of rows exported are configured in

the “table options” (next chapter).

5.4 Table Options

Customize the look and feel of the output: should be self explaining.

If you want to change the options, open the table options window and change, save and

close. The table options stay valid for the window until again changed in the table options

window.

Sort the table entries in ascending or descending order by clicking the column’s headlines

(marked red).

6 Frequently Asked Questions What are Served Pages?

Served Pages, SP, PIs – page impressions – are requests for a mobile page. The mobile page might contain several pictures, css, whatever, but for the SP count only requests for the page itself will be evaluated and only those requests count that are correctly answered (code 200 – ok). However, the filtering of search engine requests is not perfect. You can see the search engines in the report “spiders”.



Getting Help

SMS Reporting

Upcoming.

Video Streams

Upcoming

What is a wildcard expression (filters)

A wildcard expression contains a few so called “wildcards” as “*”, standing for every possible character or none, as the most common.

What is a regular expression (filters)

Regular expressions are more complicated expressions: they can contain wildcards but a lot of more sophisticated expressions may be included. For more on this refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions

Sawmill Login Screen appears

Probably a timeout caused the problem. A relogin to Netbiscuits should solve the problem. If this still happens, clear the cookies in your browser.

7 Getting Help If you need further information and help, there are several places where it could be found: If you need more information on the biscuits, about recent developments that might not be integrated in the SiteBuilder yet, you can check the BiscuitML reference. It is mainly meant for Custom Application programmers but you might as well insert a biscuit with help of the SiteBuilder Markup biscuit.

In the Netbiscuits downloads section you find the latest Getting Started Guides as well as more advanced information on the Netbiscuits features. From the Netbiscuits homepage at http://www.netbiscuits.com, go to the Developer Community tab and there click the “Downloads” link.

To get some experience in using the SiteBuilder and to learn more about new features, it is always a good idea to have a look on the templates that come with the SiteBuilder. Create new Standard Applications using a template, have a look on the pages and see how they are built.

The Netbiscuits developer forum is another good starting point for collecting information. Several Netbiscuits developers are requesting support and provide advanced insight into the newest developments of Netbiscuits community. In case you did not find what you need, contact Netbiscuits support. Netbiscuits provides 24/7 support, so if in doubt contact our friendly support team by email: [email protected]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions�

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Net Biscuits - Reporting - Getting Started Guide V1.3