We're trying to capture user logins into the system in order to start measuring user adoption. Ultimately the exact numbers don't matter but rather the relative volume of usage. Users on the low end we want to target for additional training or conversations to figure out why they aren't using it.
We attempted to use the built in audit trail to do this, filtering on "User Access via Web", id=64. The query we are using is as follows:
SELECT count(s.fullname) as LoginCount, s.fullname as FullName, max(s.BusinessUnitIDname) as BusinessUnit FROM audit a
INNER JOIN Systemuser s
ON s.systemuserid = a.objectid
WHERE a.action = 64
GROUP BY (s.FullName)
ORDER BY 1 desc
This works just fine. The problem we noticed was that there were users who we knew never logged into the CRM who were showing up with several hundred access via web entries over the course of only 2-3 months.
After talking with Microsoft they indicated that the way the audit trail works when a user logs in their user preferences are cached. The audit reads from the cache 1x/hour to determine if there have been any updates. If there were then they assume that the user has accessed the system and log an entry into the audit tables. The problem is that when you load Outlook with the CRM client installed, it loads the user preferences into cache, simulating a login even though the user didn't actually access CRM.
Now I know we can track alternative items such as record edits or creates but for the more executive users who are only going in to view dashboards or grab reports there is no way to capture this.
Is the only option parsing IIS logs to determine this or has somebody found another way to successfully audit users who use the CRM Client for Outlook and are more of a read-only type user? Thanks