I’m trying to find how DSS-SAM lets users trend software usage. This is mentioned in the intro of the User Guide, but not ever again in the document. When someone says usage trend people tend to think of a chart or graph with a line on it showing usage. I don’t think is quite the capability of DSS-SAM.
It does appear that number of uses are stored per application per computer and some other metrics such as avg run time and last used date. I suppose we could export this to excel to make some graphs (the documentation does suggest this).
Is there something I’m missing that will show me a usage trend graph for particular software?
Hi jimbot. The usage trending is a reference primarily to the DSS SAM usage intervals – the "Used within Last " that you see on the various report types. You can use the four intervals we provide out of the box (Used within last 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks) or you can specify your own intervals (Control Panel > Last Used Intervals).
Each interval gives you the count of computers that used the particular entity in the given timeframe. Looking at the way these counts change from interval to interval gives you usage trending over time. There is no charting facility in DSS SAM so you can’t get a visualization of this data directly in the UI. You need to export the report to CSV and generate the charts using a graphing tool like Excel.