Ezproxy harvest now automated

Just in time for the Christmas break, I have got the harvesting of our ezproxy logs fully automated.

From now on, a shell script will run in the early hours of each morning on our ezproxy server.  This gathers the latest day's worth of log data, reformats it, and then loads it all into our MySQL database.

It means I can leave the process running without manual intervention (which had taken the form of weekly FTPs of log files and manual script-running), and start concentrating on working with colleagues to:

• come up with a useful dashboard of commonly-needed information
• devise some more challenging questions to pose about usage patterns with our electronic resources

I will save that fun until 2020.

It should also mean that I can start stepping back from the process, and leave colleagues with a useful new facility for looking at patterns of usage data that have always been unavailable to us in any usable form until now.

The 'Quickcount' - an easy tally of enquiries, with built--in reporting and graphs

A couple of years ago, we chose to let our contract lapse with the third-party who provided our enquiries logging system.

This outside system cost a lot of money, was poorly regarded by staff, and aimed to satisfy such a straightforward need that I thought I had to be able to write something that could do the same - but at no cost.

Also, the available reporting was very limited. There were no graphs, and staff could not ask different questions of the data without contacting the supplier to code up a new report.

Basically, the system needed to provide a simple counter that would allow staff on our desk to record the types of enquiry that came their way (e.g. 'Directional', 'Printer problems', 'Using the catalogue').

The answer I came up with used PHP and a MySQL database.

Using this in-house model, staff recorded queries with a rapid tap of a button on a web page.  This logged the details to a MySQL database.

From the database, we could report back on the enquiries received using a data visualization package of choice.

To begin with, we exported the data as *csv, and looked at it in Excel, but very quickly we saw the potential for creating real-time dashboards using FusionCharts, Google Charts, and latterly Microsoft Power BI.

The end product took a few enjoyable hours to develop, and provided us with a system that was quick and easy to use, and which provided as many statistics as we fancied.

You can try out a straightforward demonstration here:

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/quickcount/quickcount_demo.php

Feel free to tap away at the 'Category' buttons, then click to see either the real-time reports that use FusionCharts, or the delayed (but much more attractive) ones via Microsoft Power BI.

I would be happy to share the code for this with anyone who might have a use for a no-frills counter that provides real time visualizations.