Automated user research, what are good strategies?

Question

I am producing an online system to integrate a number of other systems using sharepoint as a portal. I would like good logging built in so I can actually see what my users are doing (without invading their privacy!)

I would like to produce heat map overlays to see which links are being made, and intuitive reports of which pages are being used etc.

I suppose that Google analytics does this kind of thing, but are there other tools I could be using?

I perhaps can know a bit more about my users as they will all be authenticated against Active Directory to access the site. Does that change what I can or should use?

Answer 1

A question you can ask yourself is: is the privacy issue so important that you couldn't use a third-party tracking tool to help you, i.e. Google Analytics?

The only reason I can see to build your own analysis tools is to maintain personal control over how the information is collected and used (for example, if your users have a high level of privacy paranoia). Here is a link that may help you with auditing various user events as logged by Active Directory:

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/windows-active-directory-auditing.html

(Found from Google search for: active directory user tracking)