TIMS3 provides support system usage accounting to log the time a user spends in a document using a particular application. This allows the TIMS administrator to extract PC Usage reports that summarizes this accounting information by user or by document name for either all projects or for a selected list of projects.
TIMS3 accounting data is recording only when users launch the applications from the TIMS3 Project Navigator. If users first check out their files using the Project Navigator and then they launch the application from outside of this environment, no accounting data will be captured.
For each application session launched from the Project Navigator, TIMS3 records the following accounting data:
|
Field Name |
Description |
Max. Size |
|
AccDate |
The date of the user session |
date |
|
Server File Name |
The document’s file name as it exists on the server. This includes the disk and directory where the file is located. |
32 |
|
Local Node |
The name of the user’s workstation |
64 |
|
User Name |
The login user-name |
32 |
|
Charge Number |
The project’s accounting charge number as defined in the TIMS3 project record |
16 |
|
Application |
The application that was used to modify or view the document |
32 |
|
Connect Time |
The time in hours, minutes and seconds that was spent modifying or viewing the document |
time |
|
Action |
The operation performed, i.e. MOD for editing or REV for viewing |
3 |
When a user is currently in an application, a record is written into the progress table. This records the basic information regarding the user, the document, the application and the workstation node name, together with the time that the application was launched. At certain intervals, TIMS3 will send updated accounting information, as an indication that the application session is still active. This last update time is also recorded.
When the user exists the application, TIMS3 will move the accounting information out of the in progress table and into the raw data table. TIMS3 will now record the elapsed time in the application. If a user edits the same file on the same workstation many times during the day, for each time this happens an accounting record will be entered into the raw data table.
When you summarize the accounting data, the any raw data records having common start dates, user names, workstation node names and document names will have their elapsed times totaled into a single record that is written to the summarized data table.
You extract summary data out of the raw data table by clicking on the Summarize button. Accounting records captured on the current day will not be processed.
You can also reduce the number of accounting records stored by clicking on the Archive button. This will create a text file of the archived data and will remove the corresponding records from the database.