# Usage monitoring

> Usage Monitoring is a real-time tool that displays internal monitoring metrics related to the usage and activities of your organization’s dashboards.

:::caution Note 
- Usage Monitoring dashboard is available to **all customers** 
- However, certain extra features in Usage Monitoring will be available in **Standard Plan and above** only
    - These extra features include: **Export of Widget data** (Excel and CSV)
    - For customers who are eligible for these extra features but cannot find it in-app, or customers in Entry Plan and would like to give them a spin, please let us know via this form:   Holistics's Support Ticket.
:::

## What is usage monitoring dashboard
Usage Monitoring dashboard displays multiple metrics which reflect internal usage and activities of your organization’s dashboards. 

Only **Admins** are authorized to access this dashboard.   

## How to access
To access Usage Monitoring, go to 
menu  Menu -> monitor Usage Monitoring.

## Metrics
The dashboard consists of various widgets that present different usage metrics, grouped into Dashboard Usage and User Activities categories.

### Dashboard usage
1. Total Views on dashboards
2. Total Dashboards count
3. Views of dashboard over time
4. Count of dashboard viewed over time
5. Active Dashboards listing: list of viewed dashboards, sorted by their (1st) last view date & (2nd) view count
6. Dashboards with no view: list of dashboards having no view within the filtered time range

### User activities
1. Total Users count by User role 
2. Count of Viewers of Dashboards over time
3. Active Viewers listing: list of dashboard viewers, sorted by (1st) last view date & (2nd) view count
4. Users with no dashboard view activity: list of Users making no view within the filtered time range

## Interact with the dashboard
The Usage Monitoring dashboard offers several interactive features, which are useful when you want to explore the usage data further.

### Filters
- **Time range filter**: you can edit the value for your desired time range of data.
:::info
According to our [**Data Rentention Policy**](/docs/security-compliance/data-retention), Holistics will retain your data for **180 days** before removing it from the system. Therefore, there will be no usage data prior to this 180-day mark.
:::
- You can also use [**Cross-filtering**](/docs/cross-filtering) feature to interact with the data points.

### Date-drill
You can utilize the [Date-drill](/docs/interactions/date-drills) feature to quickly change the time granularity of Usage data as well.

## Export widget data
You can download the data (Excel, CSV) of Usage Monitoring dashboard & its widgets.

:::info Note 
Exporting widget data is available in **Standard Plan and above**.
:::

## Acknowledgements
- Usage Monitoring contains the usage data of **dashboards**, particularly:
    - Quick Dashboard (Dashboard 3.0)
    - Canvas Dashboard
- Usage Monitoring counts both the **in-app views** and the **public views** (embedded and shareable links) of dashboards
    - However, since public viewers of Shareable Links are anonymous, Holistics will accumulate all Shareable Link views count of that dashboard under one single user ID *(example: `public_abcde12345@holistics.io`)*
        - For example: If 3 public users visited a shareable link 10 times in total, there will be only one *`public_abcde12345@holistics.io`* email responsible for the 10 views.
    - The same goes for Embedded Analytics view count of a dashboard *(example: `embed_abcde12345@holistics.io`)*.
    

- For other objects such as **datasets** or **data models**, their usage is not included.

*If you have any requests of other usage metrics, please reach out to us via Usage Monitoring dashboard’s Feedback form or Support tickets.*

## Data retention period
Please refer to our [Data Retention Policy](/docs/security-compliance/data-retention) for more information.