Unified Communications Analytics 8.7 - Deployment Guide

How often do the data collections actually gather data and when do they run?

Does a data collection only collect data once per UTC day? When I set the frequency for how often a collection will run, does the counter start at midnight (UTC/local) or does it start when the Data Engine service starts?

By default, user-created data sources that collect a once-a-day snapshot of the data run aligned with UTC midnight and, when you enable the data source or start the Data Engine, at the interval specified in the data source. You can set an execution interval for all data sources. The default interval is different for each data source, but all are more frequent than once a day.

The snapshot-type data sources, such as the Configuration data sources (Exchange/Lync/Cisco/Domain Controllers), only collect data once a day (first run in the UTC day). Even if you schedule the collections to run more than once a day, they take a “snapshot” of the data only once per UTC day. You might schedule the data sources to run multiple times per day to handle any situation when data collection fails.

For example, suppose you add an Exchange Configuration data source, schedule it to run every 6 hours, and you created the data source at 8:00 am UTC. The data source job will run (in UTC) as follows:

If an Exchange Configuration data source job is scheduled every 24 hours, and was created at 8:00 a.m. (UTC), then the data source will run (in UTC) as follows:

If a data source job is still running during its next scheduled execution time, the job execution is skipped.

Some data sources (such as the Mailbox Contents data source) collect data continuously, only collecting data that is new or changed since the previous run. These data sources do not have a run interval time that is aligned on UTC midnight. The Mailbox Contents collection job runs continuously, with a minimum interval between the job execution start times. The start time is unpredictable. If the job execution takes less time than the minimum interval, the job will start X minutes (minimum interval) after the previous job execution started. Otherwise, job execution starts immediately after the previous execution completes.

For information about which data sources collect snapshot data and which data sources collect data continuously, see How often do collections update the data? .

As of release 8.5.1, you have the option to set a explicit schedule for a data source, specifying the time and day on which the data source collection job will run.

The main advantage of setting an explicit schedule for a data source collection is that it allows you to have jobs run separately over different time periods. For environments with a large number of configured data source collections, staggering the data source jobs can improve performance.

One difference between explicitly scheduled jobs and jobs using interval scheduling is that when the service restarts, jobs with an explicit schedule will not start immediately but will wait until the next scheduled time. Interval scheduled jobs will all run immediately after the service restarts.

If the real-time requirement for some data is not high, and the running of jobs together results in performance issues, you might set certain data source jobs to run once every two days.

When I view insights that show internal vs. external traffic, there is no data for internal traffic. Why?

When I view insights that show internal and external email traffic, such as the Mail Activity / Internal vs. External insight or Email - Activity, data is missing about internal traffic. I have configured the required data sources for the insights.

In addition to configuring the required data sources for each insight, you must also configure the Classifications | Domain Classifications in the Admin Settings to identify your internal domains. For information about configuring your internal domains, see Identifying your internal domains .

To see the required data sources for an insight, click INFO at the top of the insight.

Why are my OWA insights not showing any data?

I already have configured the required data sources (Domain Controller, Exchange Configuration, and Exchange IIS Logs) but I do not see any data in the OWA insights. Why?

The option to collect OWA data is not selected by default. To populate the OWA insights, you must have an Exchange IIS Logs data source configured with the Logons for Outlook on the Web (OWA) option selected. For more information, see Creating an Exchange IIS Logs data source .

You must also have configured IIS logging on the front-end Exchange Client Access Server (CAS) and on the back-end Exchange Mailbox servers to include the required data. For more information, see Appendix C: Configuring IIS Log Files to capture ActiveSync or OWA events .

To see the required data sources for an insight, click INFO at the top of the insight.

Why did an insight show no data for a 30-day range though I initially set the data source to collect 30 days back?

I have just installed UC Analytics. Why does the Lync Organizational Summary User Activity insight show no data when I use a custom date filter for 4 Jan 2018 - 10 Jan 2018? I set my initial data source collection to go back 30 days and I started it on January 30.

There are two data source collections that provide information for the Lync Organizational Summary User Activity insight:

When you started your Domain Controller data collection on Jan 30, the initial data collection period was set to 30 days (default). The Domain Controller data source collects information from AD and retroactively creates AD user “snapshots” in the database for each user. This ensures that there is a user object to link to historical data from data sources that collect historical information such as the Exchange Tracking Logs, Lync Users, and so on.

The Lync Configuration data source collection, however, collects data using PowerShell and only creates objects for the current day. The data only covers the date on which the Lync Configuration data collection accessed PowerShell to gather the data.

Therefore, on Jan 30, after the data source collections had finished, you had 30 days of AD user data and but only one day of Lync configuration data (Jan 30). The AD user snapshots from Jan 30 are linked to the Lync information, but user snapshots from Jan 29, 28, and earlier are not linked since Lync configuration data does not exist in the database for those dates.

The Lync Organizational Summary User Activity insight queries the AD users that are Lync-enabled (users that have a link to collected Lync data). When you specify “today”, the time range that the query looks for is “from midnight today until midnight tomorrow”.

When you specify an explicit date range such as Jan 1 - Jan 10, the query looks for the AD user snapshots that have links to Lync data from Jan 1 until end of Jan 10 (midnight of Jan 11) and takes the latest snapshot from this period, which is the Jan 10 snapshot. If you apply the rule about how UC Analytics collects historical data to the specified date range - the only linked AD-Lync data exists for Jan 30, not for Jan 10. For this reason, the insight shows no data.

After you have had UC Analytics running for a few months, you will have a few months of Lync configuration data accumulated and can use filters to view historical data in the Lync Organizational Summary User Activity insight.

This same scenario applies to other insights that use either the Lync Configuration or the Exchange Configuration data source collection to provide information such as:

Since the Lync Configuration or the Exchange Configuration data source collections only gather data for the current day, even though the Domain Controller (AD) data source collection initially contained 30 days of historical user data, there would be only one day of data for the linked AD user - Lync/Exchange configuration data.

Over time, as you run the Lync Configuration and the Exchange Configuration data source collections on an ongoing basis, you would gradually have more days available of linked user Lync/Exchange configuration data. You can then use custom date range filters on the insights.