Improved Reporting in SharePoint 2010 with ControlPoint
In my previous article on reporting in SharePoint 2007, I discussed the need for SharePoint Administrators to have adequate data and reporting on their environments, and went on to discuss the gaps in out of the box reporting. The goal of this article is to show you how Axceler can help Administrators fill those gaps.
Permissions
Reports on permissions are not easily generated with out of the box SharePoint 2010. It can be a manual process to collect and track this data, or may require custom reports using the SharePoint object model. Permissions reporting is critical to your business for a number of reasons – from regular auditing, to maintaining accurate user access, to troubleshooting functionality problems that, commonly, stem from end users trying to perform a task without having the correct permissions.
In ControlPoint, reports on Permissions can be filtered by User, AD Group, SharePoint group, or Permission level. They can also be generated on different scopes of the Farm, for example several Web Applications, Site Collections, or Sites. The flexibility allows users or Administrators to tailor the reports to the needs of the business.
The two main ways to generate permissions reports are by User or by Site. This example shows Comprehensive Permissions by Site. This Report shows a site and all Users that have access to any securable object:
Usage/ Activity
Reports on Usage and Activity can be generated by Site Collection Administrators and Site Administrators. A few examples of these reports are as follows:
- Number of Page views
- Number of Daily Unique Users
- Top Pages
Reports on Usage can be generated a number of different ways in ControlPoint. The reports allow for increased insight into how SharePoint is being used. For example, you can see who is accessing what, what sites are most active, and what is trending. ControlPoint reports span many SharePoint Sites at once, and can be filtered for long periods of time.
This example shows the top 10 most active sites in the farm for the past 12 months:
Storage
Reports on Storage can be generated by Site Collection Administrators. The reports show storage usage by site, and a trend on growth based on time frame. In SharePoint 2010, there is actually less detail in these reports than was available in 2007.
Much like Permissions and Activity, Storage reports can be generated across many SharePoint sites at once. Analyzing storage is extremely important for planning for growth, and insuring optimal performance. ControlPoint provides a number of powerful reports to extend SharePoint capabilities. This example is a Storage report on Content Databases. The report indicates how big the database is and how much each Site Collection is using:
Audit
SharePoint records audit data when auditing is enabled on a Site Collection. Site Collection Administrators can view audit records.
- Audit records include data on events that get recorded
- Events detail includes user IDs associated with event, site of event, item type(page, document, list), event date and time, event description (view, check out), and item name and URL
Auditing is a growing area of focus for many SharePoint administrators as SharePoint is more widely adopted and as it becomes more business critical.
ControlPoint Audit Log Analysis provides an easy way to filter the SharePoint audit logs. This provides meaningful reports that show what people are doing, where, and when. Audit records can be filtered by date, user, event, scope, site, and URL. Below is an example of an Audit report that was filtered by one user James Joyce:
Out of the box, SharePoint 2010 provides you with the essentials you need to manage your SharePoint environment – but comes up short in a number of areas. Getting the data you need requires you to be a little creative, and to either build something yourself – or buy something off the shelf. Fortunately, ControlPoint provides rich reporting capability out of the box that allows you to better monitor and manage your SharePoint environment.
For a more comprehensive review of the out of the box reporting capabilities of SharePoint and how ControlPoint improves upon them, please download the free Axceler whitepaper Good, Better, Best Reporting in SharePoint.
Jamie Aliperti is a Senior Sales Engineer
in Axceler's Los Angeles office.