Usage Data Collection

What Is Usage Data Collection?

Usage data collection refers to the information collected about how users interact with your applications or services. The applications or services must be licensed using Sentinel LDK cloud licensing and hosted by Thales. The usage data, which is retrieved from client devices, provides valuable information that often cannot be retrieved in any other way.

Your organization might collect usage data for many reasons, such as to:

>Gain insight into how end users use your applications and services.

>Identify upsell opportunities. For example:

•If the limit of network seats is reached frequently, that might indicate that your customer needs more seats.

•If a user evaluates your software using a license based on the Time from First Use license model which is about to expire, you can contact the user to offer a paid license or to extend their trial period.

>Identify churn risks. For example, if users do not use a particular licensed feature, they might consider the possibility of downgrading or canceling the license. For your organization, this might be an opportunity to offer training or highlight the benefits of that feature.

>Make informed decisions based on business intelligence. For example, your organization might want to determine which features are not used, so that you can phase them out over time to save resources and enable your organization to focus on more valuable features.

>Determine postpaid billing charges. Usage data can identify how many times specific features or concurrent process were used and for how long.

By creating data export reports and exporting the raw data using an application such as Microsoft PowerBI, you can analyze the usage data to help you make informed decisions. For details, see Data Export Reports.

A sample Power BI template is available in the Sentinel LDK KnowledgeBase for visualizing Login Event data. For details, see

Prerequisites for Usage Data Collection

To collect usage data, the following prerequisites must be satisfied:

>You must be subscribed to Sentinel LDK CL Service.

> You must be working with:

•Sentinel LDK 10.0.100 or later

•Sentinel EMS 6.0 or later

•Sentinel Run-time Environment 7.80 or later

Usage data for applications and services that operate offline or with detached licenses is not currently collected.

For additional requirements, see Data Export Reports.

Configuring Sentinel EMS to Collect Usage Data

Sentinel EMS can be configured for usage data collection by selecting one of the following options for the Collect Usage Data attribute:

>All – All usage data that is generated by Sentinel LDK is collected.

>None – No usage data from Sentinel LDK is collected (this is the default).

>Only Non-Personal Data – All usage data generated in Sentinel LDK is collect except for data that can be categorized as "personal data" regarding users.

>Set by Client Application – Usage data is not automatically collected. The decision to collect usage data is set individually in the sessions for each protected application (using Sentinel Licensing API).

Collected data is stored in EMS Data Platform on the Thales servers.

For details, see Sentinel EMS User Guide for Sentinel LDK.

Exporting Usage Data

You extract and utilize usage data by generating data export reports using Sentinel EMS.

Data export reports provide a way for you to get better insights into your software business dynamics. Data export reports are a collection of reports used for asynchronous data processing and reporting. Predefined data export reports are based on the customer requirements identified through research. These reports can be customized and configured to provide meaningful data. Report generation of data export reports can be triggered manually through the Sentinel EMS user interface or automated through the Sentinel EMS REST API.

You use data export reports to export information of entities such as entitlements, activations, channel partners, customers, products, and custom entities to a CSV file. You can visualize the generated CSV file using any commercial business intelligence tool, such as Microsoft Power BI.

Included in the release is a sample Power BI template offering ready-to-use reference visualization for your business, based on the exported data. The template provides views on client usage and includes information about denied logins to concurrent licenses, and licenses that are about to expire or be depleted.

The benefits of data export reports include:

>Ease of customization and configuration, requiring no SQL expertise.

>Provide a mechanism to generate data export asynchronously.

>Downloadable in the widely-compatible CSV format.

For information on data export reports, see Sentinel EMS User Guide for Sentinel LDK.

For more information on the data fields available in the exported CSV files, see Sentinel EMS User Guide for Sentinel LDK.