Page View Tracker

User’s Guide

Data Collection

The Page View Tracker Add-on provides additional page metrics for Authors, Administrators and selected users. The metrics are collected only after the plugin has been installed, therefore any page view information prior to installation of the plugin is not available.

Once the plugin is installed, it starts collecting page view information and attachment download tracking for all users when they view any Pages or Blog Posts or download Attachments in Confluence.

This data can be accessed directly from the Confluence database if needed, refer to Data Access

Permissions

For Individual Pages

The statistics for Individual pages are only available to the page Author, Confluence Administrators or any user configured in either the Global or Space Access Groups.

Access to Individual page statistics is available via:

Page Metadata Link
Page Tools Menu
Page View Macro, when only a single page matches the selection criteria

For Collections

The permission required to see Collection statistics are a more relaxed. For Collections, pages are included in the Collection based on the selection criteria in the macro parameters, such as, Labels Search or Children/Descendants.

If the selection criteria results in multiple pages, then the macro will display the results to any logged in user. If this is not desirable, then use the built-in Confluence page Restrictions tool to restrict which users have access to view the page.

Access to Collection statistics is available via:

Page View Macro, when multiple pages match the selection criteria

Assigning Permissions

Permissions can be assigned globally to all users using the Page View Tracker admin settings page, refer to General Settings below.

Permissions can also be assigned to individual Spaces, when Space Access Groups are defined, these will override the global Access Groups for the Space only, allowing Spaces to have individual control over which users are allowed access to the tool if this is desired, refer to Space Settings below.

Accessing the Statistics

There are many ways to view the statistics.

Tools Menu

On any Page, click the Tools menu (…), then click on Page View Statistics menu item (only available to the page author or Confluence Administrators)

Page Metadata

The Page or BlogPost metadata will show the number of page views, this is also a link. This will open the Page View Statistics windows.

Page Views Macro

Use the Page Views macro and drop this on any page to show the Page View Statistics. The macro can be configured to show the statistics for

A single Page or BlogPost.
A Collection of Pages and BlogPosts defined by one or more Labels.
A Collection of Pages to include Children and optionally Descendants of selected Pages.

Macro Parameters

Page/Blog Post	This selects an Individual page or parent page of a Collection. This is optional and can be combined with the Labels Search. In this case the results of the Labels Search and the Page/Blog Post will be added to the Collection.
Labels Search	Use this to create a Collection of Pages/Blog Posts sharing the defined labels. Multiple labels can be used, and any content containing one or more of the labels will be included in the Collection.
Children Only	Using the results from the selection criteria in the previous 2 parameters, also include the direct Children pages in the Collection.
Children and Descendants	Same as Children Only, however this will also include all descendants in the Collection. If used in combination with Children Only, it will override Children Only option.

When an Individual page is selected, then the Page View Statistics display will be shown.

When a Collection of pages are selected, using the Label Search and or Children options, then a similar view to the Space View Statistics display will be shown with the selected pages only.

For Individual page statistics, the statistics will be shown to users who are Confluence Administrators, the page creator or users in any of the configured Access Group. For a Collection of pages, the statistics will be shown to any logged in user.

Space Admin

The Space Admin access is only available to Space Administrators, using this link, additional statistics are provided for space-wide information. Select Apps menu and then select the Page View Tracker tab.

Confluence administration

The Confluence administration access is only available to Confluence administrators, using this link, ad-on settings and Global Site statistics are available. Once in the administration section, select Page View Tracker from the left navigation panel.

Page View Statistics

The Page View statistics provide additional statistics, the statistics collected show data from

The date the Page was created; or
The date the Add-on was installed

The statistics shown include:

Total count of views for the page
Individual user views for the page ¹
Historical page views summary ¹
Total Count of Attachment Downloads ¹

¹ Due to the cost of storing individual user views, there is a 6-month Data Retention policy that deletes individual and historical view data that is older than 6 months. This does not affect the total count of page views.

This can be changed in the Configuration Settings

When the Tool is first opened, it displays the following screen:

Page Views

This tab shows historical counts of user page views. The graph shows two lines:

Total: The total number of views per day

Unique: Only unique user views per day, which means that any user who visits the page multiple times on any day will only be counted once

The dropdown box provides the following date ranges:

This month
Last month
Past 3 months
Past 6 months
Past 12 months²

² In order to see data up to 12 months old, the Data Retention setting must be increased to 12 months to keep the data available. See Global Site Settings.

User Views

This tab shows a summary of all users who have viewed the page. It provides a summary line with the ‘total view count’ as well as the oldest collected data.

The 'total viewed count' on the Page Views tab summary line will most likely be greater than the sum of the individual User Views shown in the User Views table. This is due to the data retention policy which will delete user views that have exceeded the retention period.

The table lists all the users, the last time they viewed the page, and the total number of individual page views.

The Total Views count includes every visit for the user to this page, even if the user visits the page more than once a day.

This tab can be disabled using the Show Users setting in the Page View Tracker configuration page. Also, the User Names can be obfuscated in the configuration page.

Individual User History

Each User Name is a drill down and when clicked will show all the historical statistics for that user on this page. The drill down behavior can be disabled using the global Configuration Settings.

This screen will show a list of every day the user visited the page and how many views on that day.

Space Tools Statistics

Space Settings

Space Settings allows for individual control of Group Access at the Space level. The Group Access setting provides specific users access to the Page View Statistics tool for each Space, if required.

If the Group Access settings in the Space are left empty, then the Global Group Access permissions will apply to the Space.

If Group Access permissions are provided in the Space, these override the global Group Access groups.

Space Statistics

Space Statistics provides high-level information about views of the entire space. These include:

Total number of Pages, Blogs and Attachments in the Space
Chart showing the historical Space Views
Table of pages showing the total number of views and last viewed information
Table of downloaded Attachments within the Space.

This information is only available to Space Administrators

The chart provides the same controls as the Page Views chart, however, the information shows the total views for all tracked pages in the space.

The page table shows a list of pages in the space, by default it shows the top 20 most viewed pages.

Using the dropdown selection, the following views page choices can be selected:

20 Pages	The top 20 most viewed pages
50 Pages	The top 50 most viewed pages
100 Pages	The top 100 most viewed pages
500 Pages	The top 500 most viewed pages
All tracked pages	All pages in the Space that have Page View Tracker information collected
Not yet tracked	All pages in the Space that not yet have been viewed and tracked by Page View Tracker

The attachments table shows a list of all downloaded Attachments in the Space.

Global Site Settings

The global administration page for Page View Tracker is located in Confluence Administration → General Configuration → Page View Tracker

General Settings

There following configuration options are available to Administrators.

These settings are effective across all Spaces and pages within the site.

Setting	Description
Show Users	When this is enabled, the User View tab is visible for Individual page statistics, disable this to prevent any user information from being displayed in the statistics charts.
Show User History	When this is enabled, the user history link is enabled in the User Views tab. The User History link opens up the detailed User History of views for Individual page statistics.
Show User Names	Use this to obfuscate user names. When this is enabled, User Names are shown, otherwise the internal Confluence unique User ID will be shown instead.
Access Groups	Additional user groups that can access the Page View Statistics tool, along with the Page Author and Confluence Admins
Retention Period	Define how long to retain user view information in the database. By default the data is retained for 6 months only. This can either be disabled (by setting the value to 0) or select any value up to 12 months.

Warning:
If setting the Retention Period to 0, disabling the aging, data will remain in the database indefinitely. This must be used with care and there is no liability by the plugin vendor if the database becomes unusable due to excessive Page View Data in the database when the Retention period is disabled.

User Report

The user report provides insights into user views across the site. This report can be used for auditing activities or insights into page usage across the site.

The Period range available includes:

This month
Last month
Past 3 months
Past 6 months
Past 12 months²

² In order to see data up to 12 months old, the Data Retention setting must be increased to 12 months to keep the data available. See General Settings.

After selecting a User, Period and Page size, the Report provides the following information

User Page Views

User Attachment Views

Global Site Statistics

The Global Site Statistics provides the total number of active users per day. The history range for this chart is restricted to the data retention period.

Upgrade Data to Version 5.x

The upgrade data was introduced in version 5.0, as the backend storage was moved and redesigned to provide better data management and faster access to the data. If upgrading this plugin from any version prior to 5.0, then the Confluence administrator must upgrade the plugin data immediately after upgrading the plugin. If not, any user view activity between the plugin upgrade and the Data Upgrade will be lost during the upgrade process.

Export Data

All the stored data can be exported to CSV files for further processing and analysis, use the Export Data button to generate a zip file containing the contents of the 2 tables used to store the page and user views by this App. Once the zip file has been created, use the download link to save the file locally on your system.