Friday, May 13, 2011

Why Web Anlytical Reports "Custom Reports" always display empty reports?

As we discussed in previous blog, Web Analytics service as part of Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, is set of features to help you collect, report, and analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint Server 2010 deployment. Web Analytics features include reporting, Web Analytics workflow, and Web Analytics Web Part.

As  SharePoint administrators, we could like to leverage the SharePoint 2010 Customized Web Analytic Reports to output weekly usage reports for management on the following metrics, total number of page views, average number of page views per day, total number of daily unique visitors and average number of unique visitors per day.  Some key benefits of the custom reports are the ability display visual charts and graphs in excel worksheets and the ability to aggregate report information into one consolidated report per web app and subsequently sent out to management.You could refer here for details on different reports.

One issue we found in our environment is Custom Web Analytic Reports are not showing data. One of the consultant is able to generate the same Custom Web Analytic Reports with correct in his environment. We have tried everything from permissions to excel services without any luck. He are the steps to reproduce this error in our environments.

1. Navigate to any site and select "Site Actions" -> "Site Setting" -> "Site Collection Web Analytics Reports" ->on the left navigation select "Top Browsers" ->"Analyze" tab. You will notice a valid report with data shown in the aspx page.

2. Navigate to the ribbon group "Analyze" and choose "Customize Report". If you do not have this button, please refer the blog to enable this report.


3. Name the report, "Harry.xlsx" note the document library and the report will be generated and displayed. You could navigate to the report under http://siteURL/AnalyticsReports/Forms/AllItems.aspx? and open in the browser. We found notice no data present in the report as shown in the below screen.

We are not able to find any errors on the server and here is the log trace for your reference. It seems like call excel service succeed.

User=NA\harryc    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60

Site=/sites/Harry    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60


WcfSendRequest: RemoteAddress: 'http://sbx01:32843/484f9d239d0046a2af1afd67257e47d4/ExcelService.asmx' Channel: 'Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Proxy.IExcelServiceSoap' Action: 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/Excel/Server/WebServices/ExcelServerInternalService/ExcelServiceSoap/GetRange' MessageId: 'urn:uuid:6d0562b4-f247-47c7-b98c-b221c40cccb0'    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

WcfReceiveRequest: LocalAddress: 'http://sbx01.na.qualcomm.com:32843/484f9d239d0046a2af1afd67257e47d4/ExcelService.asmx' Channel: 'System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel' Action: 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/Excel/Server/WebServices/ExcelServerInternalService/ExcelServiceSoap/GetRange' MessageId: 'urn:uuid:6d0562b4-f247-47c7-b98c-b221c40cccb0'    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60

Entering monitored scope (ExecuteWcfServerOperation)    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60

ECS RequestId=2012    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60


User=0#.w|na\harryc    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60


Session=1.V21.5If3FmRT7OZcBtXSYrDI590.5.en-US5.en-US73.+0480#0000-11-00-01T02:00:00:0000#+0000#0000-03-00-02T02:00:00:0000#-006036.57a3d5b9-15eb-47cc-a8b4-aae9bb4a67941.N    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Document=http://sbx01/sites/Harry/AnalyticsReports/Harry.xlsx    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Result=Success    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Leaving Monitored Scope (ExecuteWcfServerOperation). Execution Time=4.05470527678797    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

WcfReceiveRequest: LocalAddress: 'http://sbx01.na.qualcomm.com:32843/484f9d239d0046a2af1afd67257e47d4/ExcelService.asmx' Channel: 'System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel' Action: 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/Excel/Server/WebServices/ExcelServerInternalService/ExcelServiceSoap/GetRange' MessageId: 'urn:uuid:6d0562b4-f247-47c7-b98c-b221c40cccb0'    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Entering monitored scope (ExecuteWcfServerOperation)    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Leaving Monitored Scope (ExecuteWcfServerOperation). Execution Time=0.222095266297812    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60
 

Result=Success    beb00800-6d2c-4fad-9f53-fe4ae1f8fc60

If you have any solution on this, please share with us.

Today as May 26, we had a good discussion with Microsoft DSE support and this issue has been resolved now. The trick is Web Anlytical Reports "Custom Reports" is based on excel service and it requires C2WT service in order to pass through the authentication. Here is the way to result the issues.

Log in to central admin -> Central Adminstration -> System Settings -> Manage services on server -> start "Claims to Windows Token Service". See screen shot for your reference.


You will see data generated for Web Anlytical Reports "Custom Reports" as below.


At this time, you should be able to enable the Web Anlytical Reports "Custom Reports" and display the data!

13 comments:

  1. If you're having any trouble with creating custom reports, I suggest you take a look at this tool I've been using - CardioLog - which is designed specifically for SharePoint and provides a fuller analytics solution. This link compares CardioLog to what is built-in to SharePoint - http://www.intlock.com/intlocksite/ProductsAndServices/CardioLog/CardioLog-vs-SharePoint-Reports.asp

    For more information in general, I would go to http://www.intlock.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Harry, check Central Admin > Manage Web Applications > select Cental Admin web application > Service Connections - check if excel service is associated with your Central Admin web app. I hope this helps.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, we checked this and even add trust location without luck. Thanks anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SharePoint consulting can provide a business with custom web parts and administrative tools. This helps an organization with development projects.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great information sharing about web analytical reports. SharePoint Consulting has the ability to take any example, workflows, portals, websites and much more.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We have just found you need to enable "Claims to Windows Token Service" to resolve this issue. Thanks everyone for your input.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Harry, I just saw this excellent post of yours thus firstly i need to thank you for sharing such information. Currently I am facing issues with the report being empty, can this issue also cause the workflow to not run? I have scheduled a weekly workflow for running some reports but i havent seen an email being send by the workflow. In the workflow settings i don't see any instances of workflow as well. Do you have any clues on this?

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  8. The first thing to check is to run manually to verify whether report is empty or not.

    ReplyDelete
  9. dear harry chen,
    can you help me to solve this :



    There is no data available for this report. Here are some possible reasons: (1) Web Analytics has not been enabled long enough to generate data; (2) There is insufficient data to generate this report; (3) Data logging required for this report might not be enabled; (4) Data aggregation might not be enabled at the level required for this report.

    i got it when i click top pages on site web analytical report.
    i also already start web analytic feature, make new web analytic on central admins, but i stillg ot the same result.

    thx for ur help berfore.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Harry, thanks for the excellent post.

    I have followed your instructions and enabled the C2WT service on both the WFE and App Server. But still the custom reports dont display any data. Please advise.

    ReplyDelete
  11. If we dont have enterprise excel services license for SharePoint, cant we use the option customize report. How can we export this data to the excel sheet with out excel services license????

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  12. HI
    i still not get the data in excel sheet , i started c2wtc service already

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you for sharing !!
    I know it's an old post, but you make my day !!
    Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete