File download report

[billhill]

Hello, A teacher in our school would like to collect data on how frequently a particular file in a Canvas course has been downloaded. The "User Access Report" found in Admin > Setting > Report seems to provide this, with columns for "Content Type", "Content" and "Times Viewed". The file in question appears in several rows in the report, with "Content Type = attachment", "Content = file title" and "Times Viewed = a number"

Just to confirm, are files downloads represented in this report, and would the number of downloads equal the total of numbers in "Times Viewed"? thanks

[billhill]

Another way to ask the question, in the "User Access Report" found in Admin > Setting > Report, what does "Times Viewed" represent for "Content type=attachment"?

[igustafson · Accepted solution]

Hello,

The User Access Report is for login related tracking in this case as explained here https://s3.amazonaws.com/tr-learncanvas/docs/CanvasDefaultAccountReports.pdf So that wouldn't be tracking files viewed in this case. if you want to track file views. the best way would be analytics https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-view-account-analytics/ta-p/165

[billhill]

We heard from Instructure via our Help desk that the "User Access Report" does provide a count of the number of times specific files are Previewed or Downloaded.

This was confirmed in our tests of the report. A student account was used to Preview and Download a file, and then the User Access Report was run. In the report, the views for the file appeared in the “Times Viewed” column.

The only complication is that a Preview counts as 1 view, while a Download counts as 2.

Unfortunately, Analytics does not provide tracking for specific courses or files.