Tracking UI actions

[dcram]

Hi,

I am trying to track every action made by the users in the alfresco web client. One of the most interesting source of information for that is the auditing of the repository services (http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Audit).

But this way, I can only collect user actions that have modified the repository (e.g. check in, check out, create node…). I also need to know on which UI button the user has clicked, even if it doesn't impact the repository. For example, sometimes the user starts to create a content, to edit it, and then cancels the content creation for some reason. In this case, there is no trace of his actions in the audit tables in db, because alfresco makes the action effective in the repository when the user clicks on "ok" at the final wizard dialog.

Does anyone know how I can get information about user navigation in the web client ? Typically, I would like to know about actions initiated by the user (action identified by action id attribute in web-client-config-action.xml) every time he clicks on an UI element…

The only information I have for the moment is the jsf outcome sent to the server by parsing the messages of the AlfrescoNavigationHandler bean in logs. But sometimes, having the jsf outcome of a page doesn't tell much about the action clicked by the user.

Thanks in advance,
Damien

[gavinc]

You're on the right track with AlfrescoNavigationHandler. Almost all navigation around the application goes via this class so you should be able to audit, but you will have to make sure you cover all routes as there are several.

Some requests however do get handed off to the original JSF navigation handler, so for these you would have to dig a little deeper. It may also be worth looking into JSF phase listeners, you may be able to determine what you need by plugging one of those in.