Statistic Software - Room usage.

[Quackers]

The head of our school thinks we have to many computers and is getting worried. I do not think we do, i think we have the right amount.

 

What i need is some way of logging usage per ICT Suite. Then printing off a daily report of how many hours that group of PC's were used for so i can see places that are being under used.

 

Its just a vanilla XP/2003 Server setup, so no tools for such reports.

 

Anybody know of a way of doing what i want?

[mac_shinobi]

Use wmi to querry how long each pc was used for, a good app that can do it is everest ultimate edition :

 

http://www.lavalys.com/

 

short of that you would probably need a vbscript that uses WMI or something programmed that uses WMI or some way of querrying the machines up time.

[alan-d]

You don't say how many you have but at one time it was directed that school should have a ratio of 16 students to 1 PC, the latest I believe is now 8 students per PC but the figure keeps dropping.

 

May be worth looking this up - could save you the time logging usage.

[RichCowell]

I thought it was more like 4 or 5 students to 1 PC... anyway, I've never been asked about usage, but I keep a log based on the number of lessons a room is booked for - 2 rooms / total of 50 possible lessons per week - count the bookings and double it as a percentage - not perfect, but it works for me.

 

We average about 80%-90% usage, low at the beginning of terms, a lot higher towards the end.

[Quackers]

We have 496 Students and 192 PC's for pupil use. So we are well above the minimum. Ofsted will praise our computer ratio if they are being used. If not then we will get marked down. Thats why i need to be keeping a usage log.

[Ric_]

@Quackers: If it is a concern, perhaps you could redeploy some of the machines for staff-noly access (e.g. at the front of a classroom with IWB or in a staff office). It may even be worth considering trading in 50 or so to reduce the ratio nearer to the 4:1 that Becta recommend - this could increase the minimum spec of your machines and reduce software licensing costs.

[alan-d]

Ofsted won't mark you down for having too many PCs. We were inspected not so long ago and one of the inspectors was telling me that they are usually happy to see PCs easily available, but what they look for is how ICT is intergrated into lessons, but that's another topic!

[Quackers]

@Quackers: If it is a concern, perhaps you could redeploy some of the machines for staff-noly access (e.g. at the front of a classroom with IWB or in a staff office). It may even be worth considering trading in 50 or so to reduce the ratio nearer to the 4:1 that Becta recommend - this could increase the minimum spec of your machines and reduce software licensing costs.

 

All staff have there own laptop (teachers) and there are another 10 PC's for staff only use around the school on top of that.

 

Our oldest PC's are PIII 666Mhz with 256MB RAM with Windows XP and Office 2003 on. They fly and are not slow and they are used. The licenses are already paid for.

 

See i know that the PC's all over are heavly used most of the time. I just need data to prove it, since the head keeps seeing so concerned.

[MkII]

On another thread some ppl wrote scripts to log logons/offs, which would then go into a report. do a search.

[Quackers]

On another thread some ppl wrote scripts to log logons/offs, which would then go into a report. do a search.

 

I've done a search and been looking for the last hour and still i can find no threads on this? Am i being blind?

[Ric_]

PM ChrisH - he was developing this in some depth using VBScript and MySQL.

[webman]

VBScripts can use the XmlHttpRequest so it is technically possible to log anything VBScript can access to a database set up on a webserver (I'm thinking PHP/MySQL )

 

EDIT: Uploaded some code that may help.

 

Basically, login/logoff.vbs will pick up information and send it to a web page. This web page then adds those details into a databse. Just view the script to view the entries in the DB. Require PHP/MySQL.

 

First-time setup, run the script with ?setup=true as query string - this will DROP THE TABLE specified in the .php file (if it exists) and create it (again).

[Quackers]

Thanks for posting that webman, but i have never installed an SQL Server or Administered one, or done anything like what you have done in HTML, PHP etc.

 

I installed MySQL 5 and the service is running.

 

I copied the files you attached to the web server.

 

I opened up login.php and changed the $dbhost to "mars" as this is the name of the server with SQL Server on.

 

Changed the dbuser and dbpassword to the root ones i setup when installing MySQL.

 

I then went to http://earth/login.php?setup=true and it comes up with error 404. (earth is my webserver)

 

What have i not done? or am doing wrong? Like i say i'm a complete newbie to MySQL and PHP. HELP! 8O

[apeo]

I think this could also be done by creating an access database and directly adding records to it with the login script. I have uploaded a script I just created but i havent tested it fully yet.

[webman]

@Apeo: Another good example of how the same thing can be achieved, and welcome to EduGeek Thanks for the script. Haven't tried it but looks good.

[apeo]

@ Webman: Thanks glad to be here, i was just thinking on it and we could have another script on logoff so you can see how long users are using it for (would have to add another field to identify if its logon or off tho). hmm come to think about it you could probably go the whole hog and monitor software usage aswell but this may be taking things too far.

[webman]

There is a script in my zip file for logoff, which just sets the db 'action' column to 'logoff' rather than 'logon'. Entirely option to have the logoff script though but useful to have. I think it'd more difficult to monitor oftware usage through VBS. The only method I can think of for tracking it without running all the time and monitoring processes, is to change all shortcuts to launch a script with the app EXE file or name as parameters to it, and then have the script update a database and then launch the app in question. Hardley seems worth it, depending on how you allocate your shortcuts. And even then, there may be complications with some apps that need special paremeters. :S

[apeo]

Thats pretty much what i thought which why I said it maybe taking things too far but having put some thought into it, yes you're right its not really worth it. :oops:

[webman]

It's still a good idea to be able to monitor what they're doing and how often stuff is used, but I can't think of a ready-made app that does it, or an easy way of doing it myself

[apeo]

hmm if was to look into creating something then i would do some research into wmi scripting and check for start and stop process events.

[webman]

Perhaps something like a compiled AutoIT 3 script might be able to provide something useful in this case.

[apeo]

Must admit im not familiar with AutoIT but if it has functions that detects start of process events and stop of process events, then yeah that would do it

[Ric_]

It's still a good idea to be able to monitor what they're doing and how often stuff is used, but I can't think of a ready-made app that does it, or an easy way of doing it myself

 

You could use NetSupport DNA for monitoring app usage It aint cheap though (but it does other stuff too)

[browolf]

i do it like this

 

for /f "tokens=1,2,3* delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do set date=%%b%%c%%d
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=:" %%a in ('time /t') do set time=%%a%%b

echo %date%,%time%,%username% >> \\backup\logs$\computer\%computername%.txt
echo %date%,%time%,%computername% >> \\backup\logs$\user\%username%.txt
ipconfig | find "IP Address" > \\backup\logs$\ips\%computername%.txt
ipconfig | find "IP Address" > \\isaproxy\logs$\ips\%computername%.txt
echo %logonserver% >> \\backup\logs$\logon\%computername%.txt
echo %time% %username% > \\isaproxy\logs$\users\%computername%.txt