Tracking User Activity

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/aspnet/Tracking-User-Activity.aspx

 

Scott Mitchell talks about tracking user activity in web applications.

Contents [hide]
1 Introduction 2 A Look at the Membership System's User Tracking Implementation 3 Designing the User Activity Log Database Table 4 Logging User Activity 5 Displaying a Particular User's Activity History 6 Viewing the Online Users and their Last Performed Activity 7 Conclusion 8 References

Introduction

I like data. I go gaga over measurable metrics. Nothing makes me happier than storing information and then seeing it expressed in tables of numbers and colorful charts. Whenever I work on a web application I am always looking for interesting data to record and analyze, and the most interesting (and potentially profitable) data that every website owner should track are usage statistics. Web server log files and online tools like Google Analytics provide an array of useful metrics, including how many unique visitors accessed your site, what pages were the most popular, what days of the week and hours of the day represent peak demand, and so forth.

Many ASP.NET web applications support user accounts, enabling visitors to create an account and sign in to the site. With a little bit of effort you can track the activity of your logged on users. This can include recording activities such as what pages were visited as well as what actions were performed. Consider a page that allows a user to manage his profile. When first arriving at this page the activity log might add an entry like "Visiting the User Profile page." After updating his e-mail address, the activity log might record, "Changed e-mail address from [email protected] to [email protected]." Such usage tracking offers a deeper level of analysis than is possible with log files or online visitor statistic tools. Instead of data that report total number of visitors or how the average user is interacting with the site, user activity tracking can provide a very detailed view of how a particular individual is using the application and what actions he is performing while signed on to the site.

This article examines how to record your users' activities in a database table and display this information in a web page. A complete, working demo application that shows these techniques in action is available for download.

ASP.NET's Membership system makes it easy to create and manage user accounts. Many websites that use Membership are configured to use SqlMembershipProvider, a Membership provider that ships with the .NET Framework and stores user account information in a Microsoft SQL Server database. The demo application for this article uses SqlMembershipProvider, storing user account information along with the user activity log in a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition database file (ASPNETDB.mdf), which you will find in the application's App_Data folder. For more information on using the Membership system refer to my ASP.NET Web Security tutorial series.