Admin view of users' connection log

Ideas
1

1. What is the general goal of the feature?
Provide ODK Central administrator with a view of the latest connection log for each web user, e.g. this information could be displayed in the User Settings panel. I currently have to ask them directly whether they were able to connect or not (especially for their first connection and resetting the account if they did not connect within the first 24 hours, so that another invitation email can be sent).

A nice add-on would be to have a view of users' last activity, e.g. "downloaded submissions from form XX in project 14", "created form XX in project 7". You can see who has published forms or created app users, but you have to navigate between projects to see this information.

2. What are some example use cases for this feature?
As ODK Central admin, I have created a new web user. A few days later, I check the User Settings panel and see that the value displayed in the latest connection column for this user is:

  • "Never connected" => I can reset the account to send another automated email to the user and reach out directly to investigate why they were not able to connect in the first place (e.g., email flagged as spam, other issue)
  • a date of connection => I do not need to take any action

As ODK Central admin, I would like to identify users who may need a refresher training on the use of the web interface, I look at the latest connection column on ODK Central and contact those who have not connected for a long time.

3. What can you contribute to making this feature a reality?
I could discuss the specs of this feature further, test out any versions of this feature developed, and provide feedback. Depending on the coding effort and my workload, I could also contribute to some extent to some of the coding.

2

Hi @Thalie!

If the most important thing is to check whether the user has logged in at all, another approach that could be simpler might be to indicate whether a user has successfully claimed their account after their account was created or their password reset. If the user hasn't claimed their account, it could show a message for the user, something like "Needs to set password". Would something like that be helpful?

Another place to access that information is the Server Audit Logs, which consolidate those actions in a single place.

1 Like
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Hi @Matthew_White and thanks for your answer.

This would be absolutely perfect!

Oooh, I had completely missed the server audit logs... it seems a bit crazy given how many months I have been playing with ODK Central now :sweat_smile:, but I think this is likely because I was the main contributor on my test instance and the log is by default displayed for the current day. I suspect I had always looked at this tab before having performed any action on that specific day and hence had always only seen the message "There are no matching audit log entries", and never tried to modify the date range / nor looked at the documentation (shame on me...).
Forget my second point then, the audit log is exactly what I was looking for. I may still be interested if the log additionally includes actions related to submissions at some points (e.g., who viewed submissions, who downloaded data, who was unsuccessful trying to download encrypted data) in future releases.

4

Is this any good? You could filter by action or so.

2 Likes
5

Thanks @Florian_May, very handy - I will certainly play with it!