Reporting improvements in Forefront TMG SP1
Forefront TMG SP1 includes some significant improvements to the reporting functionality:
- New look-and-feel for all existing reports – cleaner aesthetics that match other Forefront products.
- User Activity Report: provides detailed information about the activity of specific users.
- Reports added for new features introduced in SP1 - User Overrides and BranchCache integration.
Here are some examples of how the existing reports look after redesign:
User Activity Reports
This kind of report allows you to see the web activity of specified users. User Activity report does not take its data from the summaries, but extracts it directly from Forefront TMG logs, so the report is always up-to-date at creation time.
This is a One-Time report which means that you can’t make a recurring User Activity report.
The users can be specified by their username (e.g. contoso\evgeny) or by IP address. Forefront TMG must require user authentication in order to be able to specify users for the report by username, otherwise all web traffic will be marked as anonymous and the report can only be generated by specifying IP addresses instead of usernames.
Here is a walk-through for generating a User Activity Report:
1. Go to ‘Logs & Reports’ à Reporting Tab and click Create User Activity Report Job
2. After typing the new report name in the wizard, a Reporting Details dialog will open.
In this dialog you should choose the period of time and list of the users you want to get a report for.
The list of users (and IP addresses) should be separated by semicolons.
3. After that you need to configure publishing location and email address to send the report to, finish the wizard and click Apply the configuration.
4. Select the just created report and click Generate Selected Report.
Please note, the generation is expected to take more time than a generation of regular one-time report, since the data is taken directly from the logs rather than from summary tables.
5. And this is the report that we get:
Reports for User Override feature
User Override for blocked URL categories is a feature introduced in SP1 which allows the user to override the policy restriction when permitted and access the blocked site.
This feature has two reports:
- The first report displays which URLs were overridden most by the users. This can indicate a need to reevaluate the policy regarding these URLs.
- The second report displays a list of ‘Top overriders’ and the URLs overridden by them.
If the authentication is not enabled by access rules, IP addresses will be shown instead of user names.
- This report can indicate a possible abuse of the policy by these users and may require further investigation of the users’ actions.
Reports for BranchCache feature
This report summarizes the overall cache utilization for both the Forefront TMG cache and BranchCache. It provides an estimation of the amount of bandwidth saved by the combination of caches.
Author: Gabriel Koren, TMG Test Team
Reviewers: Roman Golubchyck, Ori Yosefi
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I've had TMG installed for some time now, and it has the latest Service Pack, but it has never been about to produce a report, that includes the user name, only IP address, the log files, contain username information, but the reports generated always include the IP address only, I work in a school, and IP address reports, aren't helpful, as I want to make these reports accessible to specific management staff.Anonymous
September 03, 2010
This new User Activity report looks great, but it doesn't work at all for me. Apparently the user name is not allowed to contain a space, which all of ours do (firstname lastname). This would seem like a major oversight, is there any chance of a fix so the report can be used for those of us with user names containing spaces? Thanks.Anonymous
September 10, 2010
Have you tried enclosing the user name in quotes: "domainjohn doe"Anonymous
September 21, 2010
I've installed TMG2010 SP1 on W2k8 R2 server and the reporting feature desn't work. Reports are completely empty. I have found that turning off the UAC and installing a hotfix TMG-KB980311-GLB.msp should resolve the issue, for me not :(Anonymous
September 23, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 05, 2010
same here for me the reports using IP Addresses work fine but through user name they come back emptyAnonymous
October 22, 2010
I need the new User Activity Report but this report doen´t work on my TMG2010 SP1 with Hotfix KB2288910 on my W2K8 R2. When i generate this report i seen evry Time "Error: Subreport could not be displayed" I can enter IP-Adresses or User in Format Domain%USERNAME% on both ways i see the Same error.Anonymous
October 27, 2010
I'm having the exact same problem than Wolfgang Berns, SP1 and all update available has been applied.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I received a hotfix yesterday from Microsoft and It fixed everything for me the issue was caused by special characters. CheersAnonymous
November 10, 2010
Hi, Same problem llike Wolfgang Berns Error: Subreport could not be shown SP1 and Update 1 present. Has anyone found a solution?Anonymous
November 11, 2010
Hi, the same for me. Error: Subreport could not be shown I have it on two different servers. Any suggestion ?Anonymous
December 14, 2010
Hi, the same at my site. Using Sp1 + Update2 . Anyone already got some Info about this?Anonymous
December 23, 2010
Hi there, i got also the same error - is there any solution?Anonymous
February 02, 2011
I'm still waiting to upgrade it SP1 but don't wanna get in trouble.Anonymous
February 25, 2011
I have TMG and SP1 installed. In the reports I can see users activity report of the user that I selected OK. I am using TMG in a workgroup but created the user`s accounts in a domain so that they can be authenticated as Web Proxy clients. The thing is that in the Session report, some of them ara authenticated as Web Proxy clients and their corresponding IP as well as SecureNat clients and their corresponding IP too. But most of them appear as SecureNAt clients, without their names. I would like to track the activity by ALL users name not their IP. How can I do that with TMG?Anonymous
March 15, 2011
Yes reporting improved significantly. After SP1 installation now I have BLANK RESULTS , awesome!! and since 6 hours searching and no solution yet!!!Anonymous
April 02, 2011
Installed SP1, Update 1 and Rollup 3 Error: Subreport could not be shown Please advise.Anonymous
May 03, 2011
I have same issue. i have blank result no idea why..Anonymous
October 07, 2011
I have installed TMG 2010 and sp1 on windows 2008 it worked fine and i can get UserActivity reports I am serching for the way to get yser activiti in a time base (for Single User)Anonymous
June 09, 2012
Need date and time in User Activity report....Anonymous
July 17, 2013
Please can someone explain to me why the TMG Server itself be among the highest users ?Anonymous
January 16, 2014
Can someone help me with my reports?..it's overlapping...thanks..same in IE and Firefox.Anonymous
February 09, 2014
How can i view logs by single IP or UserAnonymous
April 14, 2014
hi , I need logs report with date and time. but we can't . please tellme easy way from TMG-2010Anonymous
May 13, 2014
Overlapping or messed up reports is (at least before SP1) due to compability issues. Load the report in IE, press F12 and choose IE 8 (or so) mode. Fixed my problems at least :)Anonymous
May 28, 2014
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 28, 2014
Code Example copy paste didn't work so copy what was done here but for the htm file
http://www.jasonsamuel.com/2013/12/27/fixing-the-citrix-access-gateway-blank-page-in-ie-11-internet-explorer-11-on-your-netscaler/Anonymous
November 27, 2014
Hi, I need your Help. Installed TMG 2010 on windows 2008R2 and updated to the latest. But from the begining TMG reports are getting overlapped. Any help appreciates...Thx.