Scenario 2 - Track Active Web Browsing

Problem

Some employees claim they're not really surfing. if a web site is open, how do I know if an employee left it open by accident, as he claims,  or if he is actually reading and browsing through the site?

Solution

Spector 360 records whether or not activity is happening on a site. Because you're most concerned with use of resources for unapproved activity, start by creating a list of "unapproved" web sites (by domain): your blacklist. Then, find out who goes there and is actively wasting time and resources.  For this scenario, you will modify the existing Quick View chart, "Users Spending the Most Time on Web Sites."

How do you decide which domains to put on the blacklist? For several weeks, check the Quick View charts "Web Sites Visited Most Frequently" and "Web Sites Where Users are Spending the Most Time."  Note the inappropriate sites where employees are tempted to visit. These web sites can be on your blacklist.

Create a "blacklist" of web sites:

  1. Open the Management tool and select the Domain Groups folder.

  2. Click New on the toolbar. A <New Group> Event Domain Group window appears.

  1. Enter a name and description for the group. This example shows a blacklist for job search domains. You could define several blacklist groups: one each for job searching, pornography, shopping, reading the news — or whatever is a problem within your organization.

  1. Select the domains for your blacklist from the list of "Available Event Domains" in the left column. Click the > button to send them to the "Selected Domains" list. When your list is complete, click Save and Close on the toolbar.

Note: The Available Event Domains are gathered from recorded events on your network (not every domain on the Internet). If the available list is incomplete, you can add domains to it. See Adding a Domain.

The new domain group is now listed under Domain Groups Management.

 

Copy "Users Spending the Most Time on Web Sites":

There are several ways to start a chart: (a) create a new chart (as in Scenario 1), (b) modify criteria and settings on an existing chart, or (c) copy a chart and then modify it to preserve the settings on the original chart. That's what we'll do for this scenario.

  1. Select the Quick View tool.

  2. Use the new panel ("My Charts") you created in Scenario 1, or create another new Quick View panel by opening New on the toolbar and selecting Panel.

  3. Now, locate the chart you want to copy. From the Quick View panels, select Web Sites. In the right pane, right-click on the chart "Users Spending the Most Time on Web Sites." Select Copy.

  1. Return to your new Quick view panel ("My Charts") and right-click on the right pane. At the pop-up menu, select Paste. The chart is copied into the panel. You can modify "Users Spending the Most Time on Web Sites" without affecting the provided chart in the Web Sites folder.

Change the chart name:

  1. At the bottom of the copied chart, find and click the Settings button. The Chart Settings box shows a chart about Web activity that includes the Top 10 Users, and is based on "Active Time." Except for the chart name, these are essentially the settings you want.

  2. Change the chart name and click OK. The Quick View chart now has a new name.

 

Change the criteria:

  1. Criteria is where you will select the "blacklist" domains. Click the Criteria button below the chart to display Criteria selections Make sure the General Criteria settings show a date and time that make sense for your purposes.

  2. Select the Event Criteria tab. Click the drop-down arrow next to Domain(s) and select Include Specific Domain Group(s). The Domain Groups Selection box appears.

  3. Select your blacklist domain group (or groups) from the Available Domain Groups on the left side of the box. (Remember, these groups are defined using the Management tool as described above.) Click > to add the group to the Selected Domain Group(s) on the right side of the box.

  1. Click OK to when your Domain Group list is complete. The Domain Groups Selection box closes and the Event Criteria panel is updated with the selection information.

  1. Click OK on the Criteria box to apply the settings and view the chart.

Drill into chart details:

For users actively using blacklisted sites, you can see which sites were used and for how long.

  1. Roll your mouse over a chart element (a bar in a bar chart) to see the total active time at the sites in a tool tip.

  2. Click on the chart element (bar) to open a window of Event recordings that shows detailed information for each blacklisted site visited.

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