[Reports] Improve "Page Views" UI

The user "Page Views" information is not very useful as it is presently designed. Two small tweaks with the UI could vastly improve it's present functionality until a more comprehensive admin tool can be developed. The first would be to set From-To date/times for page views occurring during a certain time period(perhaps with a default setting of a month) and second, provide the option to view All Data or a Specific Course's data. The downloadable CSV file would also match the query information requested by this UI tweak. The Page Views page could also be launched into a new tab.  

Below is an image of what these tweaks would look like in the UI.

85285_PageViews-UI-improvement.jpgPageViews-UI-improvement.jpg

This small tweak (until something better is developed) would allow Canvas admins to better investigate issues, rather than tell instructors and students the information is not available or outside of a default date range.

18 Comments
kona
Community Champion

 @cward3 , technically yes - "in the meantime you can filter and slice the requests data (page views) any which way you need using Canvas Data." - realistically for most people, no. Smiley Sad

cward
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

I know this isn't super realistic for most people 😕 I wanted to highlight that there is data coming out of Canvas Data that can answer this question until we can get a better user experience built out in Canvas itself.

pchaney
Community Member

Originally, I was just referring to Page Views, but Chris mentioned Canvas Data, and I share Kona's opinion. I have not fully explored Canvas Data but it's not the real Canvas database. Canvas Data appears to be the analytical data developers thought customers wanted.

The open source quick start installation of Canvas reveals 170+ tables. Canvas Data has 56 tables, and these are in data warehouse fact/dimension tables, so we are really using only 28.    170+ tables squished down to 28 (essentially)tables might be good for analytical reports, but not so much for scenarios I mentioned above, and unless you are querying the actual tables rather than second-hand generated tables, how do you really know it's accurate?  There are so many different things admins could query a real database for  that developers wouldn't guess we would need.

With Canvas offering beta and test environments, why not offer a special database query environment?  Admins could query an actual copy of the full database using a web-based query interface.  From Instructure's point of view, there would be no computational overhead needed(as for Canvas Data), just space for a copy of the database and admin access via a web UI to it. Another option would be adding the database copy to the list of download links within Canvas data

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...
gibbonsd
Community Participant

There is one improvement that needs to be considered for the "Page Views" UI.  Either next to the UserAgent Column or within the UserAgent Column the operating system needs to be included with the Web Browser.   

The Data of the Operating System is already there, it is not Displayed with the UserAgent Column.

I download the CSV file everytime a student is adamant about using Chrome web browser. 

What usually happens after spending a large amount of time tracking down the issue, it turns out that the student trying to obtain a third party software or product through the Canvas system.  And the students were adamant the issue is a Canvas issue because Canvas was preventing them from downloading to their Chromebook or Android devices.   An example would be LockDown Browser from Respondus.  When in fact, the third party software does not support Chromebook devices or Android Devices.

And yes the students are using Chrome, however, it is the Mobile Version versus the Desktop Version.  There is no guarantee that the third-party software used in conjunction with Canvas will work in the same operating system that Canvas is supporting.

Example of Mobile Chrome Users:

  • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 10575.58.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.99 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.1.1; Moto E (4) Build/NDQ26.69-64-9; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/68.0.3440.91 Mobile Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 11_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/604.1.34 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/68.0.3440.83 Mobile/15G77 Safari/604.1
  • Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 11_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1
Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

 

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: New
 
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Added to Theme