4. Analytics
In the previous version of
SharePoint—SharePoint Server 2010—the Web Analytics Service Application
maintained usage and analytics data for the SharePoint farm. With the
new SharePoint 2013 platform, Microsoft redesigned the analytics
components and integrated analytics with SharePoint search.
Note SharePoint
2013 replaces the Web Analytics Service Application of SharePoint 2010
with the new analytics engine that is part of search.
From a high level, the new analytics features of SharePoint 2013 provide the following advantages:
- User recommendations based on usage data tracking
- Promoted search results based on usage and visit tracking of content
- More sophisticated usage tracking with the SharePoint search engine platform
- Search is ubiquitous across the SharePoint platform and, therefore, better equipped to manage usage and analytics
5. The Health Analyzer
The following
steps demonstrate how to access the Health Analyzer settings and
reports from Central Administration:
- Open Central Administration.
- Click the Monitoring heading link.
- Review the links under the Health Analyzer heading.
Because the job of the Health Analyzer and
reporting issues is important, you may notice that the Health Analyzer
displays a banner on the Central Administration home page when it
detects errors or warnings. If you do not see this banner on your
Central Administration home page then all is good with your farm. Do
not be alarmed if you just installed SharePoint 2013 and now see a red
or yellow banner (see Figure 6).
The Health Analyzer has a number of extensive rules, which it uses to
report anything that might pertain to a configuration, security, or
operational issue. Sometimes, these rules trigger to warn users, but
the issue is not always serious—such as the rule that warns users of
the potential to run out of disk space, which occurs if the amount of
memory in the system is more than half the available disk space on the
system drive (for core dump purposes). This being said, you should pay
attention to every warning and error, just in case SharePoint reports a
serious issue.
Note You should pay close attention to every warning and error reported by the Health Analyzer.
Click the View these issues link, which
navigates you to the same page as the Review problems and solutions
link under the Monitoring heading. If the Health Analyzer has picked up
issues to address in your farm, the Review Problems and Solutions page
should list those issues. See Figure 7
for an example from my development farm.
- Click any of the issues, and SharePoint will open a page with more specifics about the issue.
- In some cases, SharePoint can help you fix issues, with the Repair Automatically icon on the dialog ribbon.
- If SharePoint cannot automatically fix an issue, fix the issue
manually and then come back to the issue and click the Reanalyze Now
icon to request that the Health Analyzer determine if you remedied the
issue.
The Health Analyzer uses a series of rules to determine if a particular area of the SharePoint platform needs attention.
- Navigate back to the Monitoring page in Central Administration.
- Click the Review Rule Definitions link.
- SharePoint shows a page consisting of a standard list of rules (Figure 8).
- Click the name of any list item in the appropriate category to view the rule definition.
- You may click the Edit icon to edit the rule list item—you
may change the name, scope, schedule, and whether SharePoint can
configure the issue automatically.
