Creating Server Activity Reports

Two types of server activity reports can be generated using this interface. The first report is a History report. This report simply displays the changelog records that match the selection criteria, one record per line. The second report is a Statistics report. This report allows you to reduce the changelog records to numbers, based on several different criteria. This is where you can determine, for example, how many postings were made to a given list on a range of specified dates, how many times a particular LISTSERV command was issued, and so forth. Use the two tabs to switch between the two different types of reports.

Server activity reports are only available for LISTSERV servers that have the SYSTEM_CHANGELOG site configuration parameter set to 1 and only for the time span it was enabled. Enabling changelogs in the site configuration will not make it possible to view past server activity. If changelogs are enabled but set to rotate over time (for example, yearly changelogs), then the reports are only available for the current year.


Generating a Server Activity Report

  • Click on either the "History" or "Statistics" tab to choose the type of report that you want to create.
  • Choose which events to include in the report under "Report Events".
  • Define the date range for the report under "Report Period".
  • Optionally, you can also select the reporting interval for Statistics reports. The default is to show totals for the entire reporting period.
  • Click the "Update" to button to generate the report.

Report Events

To select the events for your report, check one or more boxes under "Report Events", and then click the "Update" button to display the relevant information. To check all boxes, click on "Check All". To clear all the event selections, click on "Uncheck All".

There are a number of events that can be reported, depending on which of the checkboxes are selected. Each column heading in the report is clickable and will sort the column in ascending or descending order. A small arrow pointing up or down will appear indicating the order.

The filter row allows you to narrow the data that is displayed in the table. Operators such as = < > are all supported. For example, if you only want to see months with more than 1000 postings, type >1000 in the appropriate filter box.

Mail

Check this box for all MAIL records in the changelog file to be displayed (History) or counted (Statistics). These records track mail posted to lists (outgoing mail after processing).

Dist-Nje

Check this box for all DIST-NJE records in the changelog file to be displayed (History) or counted (Statistics). These records track miscellaneous inter-server jobs coming from the backbone, for instance, LUPD, SUPD, X-SPAM, and so forth. Dist-NJE records do not contain the Subject Line column described below.

Mail-Merge

Check this box for all MAIL-MERGE records in the changelog file to be displayed (History) or counted (Statistics). These records track completed mail-merge jobs.

Virus

Check this box for all VIRUS records in the changelog file to be displayed (History) or counted (Statistics). VIRUS records track virus scanning actions that resulted in a virus being found. Note that a VIRUS record contains only the Date, Job Type, Locally Processed Recipients, Job Info and Name of Job/List columns described below.


Report Columns

To select the columns for your report, click on the "Show Advanced" button and select the columns of your choice. For Statistics reports, you should generally only choose one report column at a time (Job Type or Name of Job/List or Subject Line) as each value of the text field is counted independently and sorted in alphabetical order, and rows could then include unrelated values and cause some confusion. For History reports, you can choose as many report columns as you would like. If you don't have the advanced options enabled, the default is to include all columns for History reports and only the Job Type column for Statistics reports.

Job Type

Check this box to include a type-of-job column in the report that displays the type of event that occurred.

Local Recs

Check this box to include a column for locally processed recipients, which represents the number of recipients processed locally by LISTSERV (in other words, recipients who were not packaged into backbone DISTRIBUTE jobs) for MAIL, MAIL-MERGE and DIST-NJE records. For VIRUS records, it represents the number of recipients that would have received the virus if it had not been rejected.

Forwarded Recs

Check this box to include a columns for forwarded recipients, which represents the number of recipients packaged into backbone DISTRIBUTE jobs and not processed locally for MAIL, MAIL-MERGE and DIST-NJE records. For VIRUS records, it is not used.

Message Size

Check this box to include a column for message size, which represents the size of the message (rounded up to the nearest kilobyte) for MAIL, MAIL-MERGE and DIST-NJE records. For VIRUS records, it is not used.

Name of Job/List

Check this box to include a column that displays the name of the job or list. For MAIL or MAIL-MERGE, it represents the job name or list name. For VIRUS, the name of the list that would have distributed the infected email is displayed. For virus-infected messages posted to the listname-request or owner-listname addresses, a dash is used. For DIST-NJE, the type of job is displayed (for example SUPD, X-SPAM, Netwide_SIGNOFF).

Job Info

Check this box to include a column that displays general information about the record, which varies depending on record type. For MAIL or MAIL-MERGE, it represents the address to which the distribute job was sent. For a VIRUS record type, the name of the virus is displayed. For DIST-NJE, the value depends on the type of DIST-NJE job.

Bounce Address

Check this box to include a columns that displays the bounce address, which is equivalent to the RFC821 MAIL FROM envelope header of MAIL, MAIL-MERGE and DIST-NJE records.

Subject Line

Check this box to include a column that displays the subject line that was used for MAIL or MAIL-MERGE jobs. It is not used for VIRUS or DIST-NJE records.


Report Period

Select the start and end dates and times for your report.


Interval

This parameter allows you to choose how to divide results in the Statistics report. You can show events divided Daily, Monthly or Yearly. The default is None, which will display aggregate totals (one row for the entire date range). This option is useful if you want to compare the number of postings per month, for example.


Report Format

This pulldown menu controls how to display the reports. For History reports, you can either display the data on screen or download it as a CSV file. For Statistics reports, you can also choose to view the data in a variety of charts, including bar charts, line charts and a radar chart. The charts are only available if your Interval is set to None.


Lines per Page

This parameter controls how many rows of data will be displayed on a single page of results. If you want to break the results into pages of 100 rows, for example, type 100 in the box and click "Update". The default is 1000.



LISTSERV® is L-Soft's email list management software, originally developed by Eric Thomas in 1986. Visit the LISTSERV® Resource Center for more complete documentation.

LISTSERV® is a registered trademark. The trademark identifies LISTSERV® as a brand of email list management software developed by L-Soft.