Analytics
Requirements: QLM Enterprise v11+
Overview
QLM Enterprise allows you to collect analytics about your application's usage. In the current release, QLM can collect and report analytics about installations and usage of your software application.
You can enable analytics either by directly calling specific API methods from within your application or by setting the QlmEnableAnalytics property if you're using the QLM License Validator class.
The granularity of the usage information is per day. If a user launches your application 5 times in a given day, QLM will report that the application was used on that day but will not report the number of times the application was used.
Enable Analytics via QlmEnableAnalytics
To enable QLM to publish analytics information to the License Server:
Launch the QLM Management Console
Go to the Protect Your Application wizard
Set the QlmEnableAnaytics property to true
Continue stepping through the wizard and generate the LicenseValidator class as well as the XML settings file.
Update your application to use the files generated above.
Enable Analytics by calling the API
To collect data about your application's installs and uninstalls, QLM provides 3 methods: AddInstall, UpdateInstall, and RemoveInstall.
AddInstall should be called during the installation of your application or the first time your application runs.
UpdateInstall should be called if any of the data published to the server during installation was modified.
RemoveInstall should be called when your application is uninstalled.
UpdateLastAccessedDate should be called every time your application runs and at least once per day.
To view reports about your application's installations, start the QLM Application and click on the Analytics tab.
The Analytics tab displays two graphs and a table.
The Trial Installs graph displays statistics about all the trial installs and uninstalls of your application.
The Permanent Installs graph displays statistics about all the permanent installs and uninstalls of your application.
The All Installs grid displays data about all installs and uninstalls.
Methods
AddInstall
public bool AddInstall(string softwareVersion, string osVersion, string computerName, string computerID, string activationKey, string computerKey, bool trial, string productName, int majorVersion, int minorVersion, ref string installID).
Description
Registers an installation with the server. You should call this function once when your application is installed. You should store the returned installID in your application's settings and reuse it on subsequent calls to the QlmAnalytics API.
Parameters
softwareVersion: Version of your software osVersion: Version of the operating system computerName: Name of the computer computerID: Unique identifier of the computer activationKey: activation key on the system computerKey: computer key associated to the system productName: name of your product majorVersion: major version of your product minorVersion: minor version of your product installID: unique identifier of this installation, returned from the server.
Return
Returns true of the data was successfully published to the server.
UpdateInstall
public bool UpdateInstall(string installID, string softwareVersion, string osVersion, string computerName, string computerID, string activationKey, string computerKey, bool trial, string productName, int majorVersion, int minorVersion).
Description
Updates information of a registered installation on the server.
Parameters
installID: unique identifier of this installation, returned by a call to AddInstall softwareVersion: Version of your software osVersion: Version of the operating system computerName: Name of the computer computerID: Unique identifier of the computer activationKey: activation key on the system computerKey: computer key associated to the system productName: name of your product majorVersion: major version of your product minorVersion: minor version of your product
Return
Returns true of the data was successfully published to the server.
RemoveInstall
public bool RemoveInstall(string installID, out string errorMessage) Description Unregister an application with the server. You should call this function when the user uninstalls your application.
Parameters
installID: unique identifier of this installation, returned from the server. errorMessage: returned error message if the call fails.
Return
Returns true of the data was successfully published to the server.
UpdateLastAccessedDate
public bool UpdateLastAccessedDate(string installID) Description Updates the last accessed date. You should call this function every time your application starts up and at least once a day.
Parameters
installID: unique identifier of this installation, returned from the server.
Return
Returns true of the data was successfully published to the server.
Viewing Analytics Data
Analytics Data can be viewed from the QLM Management Console or the QLM Portal.
To view analytics data from the QLM Management Console:
Launch the QLM Management Console
Go to the Analytics tab
On the top toolbar, you can select the License Model and the date range of the displayed data.
The different tabs display various graphical representations of the collected data whereas the actual data can be viewed in the Data View tab.
To export the data for further analysis in tools such as Excel, click the Export button in the ribbon bar.
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