Recording Chromebook logins, including device identifier.

[STWainwright]

We have Chromebooks for all students and are looking to move over to Securly from our current on-site filtering and classroom monitoring solutions.

 

The only major issue I have is that we would lose access to any logging of user activity that includes an identifier for the device. This is useful time to time when a student has appropriated another student's password, allowing us to see that their account was used on another device.

 

I know the Google Admin Console gives me the ordered list of recent users for a device, but without timestamps I can't prove which device any questionable activity came from.

 

The only service I've found that seems to provide this is Gopher, however I contacted them and was told they can only provide to US/Canada schools -- we're in the UK.

 

Is anyone aware of a service that will provide this? It doesn't come up often so I don't need anything pretty, just any form of recording user logins on Chromebooks that includes some identifier for the device, like the serial or the API ID.

 

Thanks.

[jthompson]

Would love to have complete, timestamped logs of sign-ins for our Chromebooks, but I'm not aware of whether it's actually possible. I did wonder about a Chrome extension, but that's probably not going to be able to grab the required device info, and it would also follow users around on non-school devices, too.

[STWainwright]

Here's a screenshot I found from the 'Gopher Buddy' extension, which is basically exactly what I'm looking for, so it must be possible.

 

 

Securly shows the timestamp for the most recent user on each device (I'm told this is not just being pulled from GAC) -- I just need something that actually logs these entries over time, even if it just throws them into a spreadsheet.

Edited December 3, 2021 by STWainwright

[dhicks]

Is anyone aware of a service that will provide this? It doesn't come up often so I don't need anything pretty, just any form of recording user logins on Chromebooks that includes some identifier for the device, like the serial or the API ID.

 

This is somewhere on my to-do list as well but, as you point out, not something we use every day so I hjaven't looked at it recently.

 

Does GAM let you produce a report that includes user login times and device?:

 

https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki/Reports

 

You'd probably need to put the above in some kind of script that ran every so often (every hour?) and updated a spreadsheet or similar.

[STWainwright]

Thanks. Seeing what I could pull off in a scheduled report myself was/is my clunky backup plan, but I was rather hoping there'd be something out there already, especially seeing as Gopher appears to be reasonably popular.

[paulkerton]

I'm not entirely sure but I think GAT can do it. It's not cheap though!

[jthompson]

I can't see a "Gopher Buddy" extension in the Chrome Web Store, but there's a "Gopher for Chrome" app in the Google Workspace Marketplace (https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/gopher_for_chrome/551947063268).

 

Their privacy policy basically says "don't use this in Europe", so something of a dead end, but from the Marketplace description (my emphasis):

 

Run reports to show all usage session activity for a single device or user, which can be useful when tracking down causes of damage.

 

That suggests complete logs of users against devices. However, the description also talks of scheduled reports and 'most recent user' as a field of the report, which does make me wonder whether this wouldn't just be an eloborate cludge based on reading the most recent user repeatedly through the day (not at all the same thing).