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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.