Newsletters



Sawmill Newsletter

August 17, 2011



Welcome to the Sawmill Newsletter!

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News


Sawmill 8.5.0 is now available. This is the final, production release of the new Sawmill 8.5 version, which is a major upgrade to Sawmill 8. It is also a free upgrade to Sawmill 8 (though your profiles and databases will need to be converted). You can download Sawmill 8.5.0 from http://sawmill.net/download.html . Please send your feedback about your experiences with Sawmill 8.5.

An error in our web site ( www.sawmill.net ) which caused some browser to have trouble downloading Sawmill, has been corrected. If you were not able to download Sawmill a couple weeks ago, please try again.

Sawmill 7 users can upgrade to Sawmill 8 for half of the license price; or if you have Premium Support, the upgrade is free. Major features of Sawmill 8 include support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, real-time reporting, a completely redesigned web interface, better multi-processor and multi-core support, and role-based authentication control.

This issue of the Sawmill Newsletter gives an example of the use of snapons, a new feature of Sawmill 8.5, to count and graph the number of accesses on a particular file (e.g., a download link).


Get The Most Out Of Sawmill With Professional Services

Looking to get more out of your statistics from Sawmill? Running short on time, but need the information now to make critical business decisions? Our Professional Service Experts are available for just this situation and many others. We will assist in the initial installation of Sawmill using best practices; work with you to integrate and configure Sawmill to generate reports in the shortest possible time. We will tailor Sawmill to your environment, create a customized solution, be sensitive to your requirements and stay focused on what your business needs are. We will show you areas of Sawmill you may not even be aware of, demonstrating these methods will provide you with many streamlined methods to get you the information more quickly. Often you'll find that Sawmill's deep analysis can even provide you with information you've been after but never knew how to reach, or possibly never realized was readily available in reports. Sawmill is an extremely powerful tool for your business, and most users only exercise a fraction of this power. That's where our experts really can make the difference. Our Sawmill experts have many years of experience with Sawmill and with a large cross section of devices and business sectors. Our promise is to very quickly come up with a cost effective solution that fits your business, and greatly expand your ROI with only a few hours of fee based Sawmill Professional Services. For more information, a quote, or to speak directly with a Professional services expert contact consulting@flowerfire.com.



Tips & Techniques: Tracking Downloads Using The "Particular File Access" Snapon


Sawmill 8.5, now available for download, includes new feature called "snapons." Snapons are components which can be attached to a profile, or detached from a profile, and which add functionality to the profile. Snapons are a very general technology, and can be used to make almost any change to a profile, including adding fields (log, database, or report fields), adding log filters, adding database filters (see below), adding reports, or other operations. Snapons can be attached or detached from a profile even after the database has been built, and do not require a rebuild.

Several useful snapons are included with Sawmill, others will be added in the future. This newsletter describes how to use the "Particular File Access" snapon to track the number of downloads (or accesses to any other particular file or URL) on a web site.


Attaching the Snapon

Starting with a web server analysis profile, go to the Snapons page of the Config section of the profile. There, you'll see a list of available snapons, and attached snapons (the Sessions snapon is attached by default to most web analysis profiles, providing session information):




The Snapons Page

Select Particular File Access, and click Attach Snapons. It will prompt for confirmation:




Confirmation Prompt


The snapon will now prompt for its parameters. The particular parameters vary depending on the snapon, but in this case it needs to know (1) which field to examine, (2) what value to look for, and (3) what to call the field that's going to count the number of that value, in that field. In this case, we're creating a field called "downloads" which counts the number of times the page field is equal to /downloads.html:



Snapon Parameters


Once all parameters have been selected, choose the name for the snapon instance (which will appear in the list at the right of the Snapons page):



Snapon Name


Finally, click Finish, and the snapon will attach to the profile. This will be a quick operation (a few seconds) if the database is not yet built. If the database is built, it will take longer as it must go through every row of the database, adding the new field and populating it. The time to attach a snapon is proportional to the size of the database, and can be similar to the time to rebuild the database.



Attaching Snapon Progress

Viewing The Reports

Once the snapon is attached, Downloads will appear as a column in most reports, including the Overview and all table reports. It will also be added as a graphed field in the Days reports:



The Days Report, With Downloads


Multiple Instances Of The Same Snapon

It is possible to attach multiple instances of the same snapon. So for instance, if you wanted to track both "downloads" (hits on /download.html) and "orders" (hits on /thanks_for_ordering.html), you can just attach the Particular File Access snapon twice, once as above and then again for the "orders" field.


Professional Services

This newsletter describes the use of a the Downloads snapon. If you need assistance with this snapon, or with other snapons, or creating a custom snapon, our Sawmill Experts can help. Contact sales@sawmill.net for more information.



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