Working with Parent-Child Profiles

If your web activity data file contains data for multiple web sites, you can use Parent-Child profiles to automatically create Webtrends Analytics profiles and reports that break out data for each site individually. Parent-child profiles are especially useful for ISPs or web hosting services who host multiple customer sites on their web servers. Using parent-child profiles makes it simple to automatically split data into individual domain-specific profiles called child profiles. Each child profile can generate a separate set of reports.

Parent-Child profiles provide the following benefits:

• Parent-child profiles simplify configuration by making it easy to create new profiles and reports for new domains. For example, after you set up a parent-child profile, Webtrends Analytics can auto-discover new sites added to the web activity data file, automatically create child profiles for them, and begin generating reports based on the new sites.

• Because Webtrends analyzes subsets of data instead of the entire web activity data file, parent-child profiles can improve performance for large data files. Each child profile can be individually updated and reconfigured.

• Child reports are smaller than standard reports. This is useful for customers who may not need the full scope of report data that Webtrends Analytics can provide.

• If you need to limit access to report sets by web site, for example if you provide reporting for multiple customers, you can configure user access individually for each child profile and prevent users from seeing report data for other sites.

Limitations of Parent-Child Profiles

As a best practice, you should limit the number of children per profile to 20-25 child profiles. Large numbers of child profiles can cause performance problems.

Parent-child profiles have the following limitations:

• Child profiles cannot have server clusters, even if the Parent profile is configured to use them.
• Because Visitor Data Mart does not store aggregated data in report-ready form, Parent-Child profiles are not available for Visitor Data Mart profiles.
• Parent-Child profiles are not available for Webtrends Analytics On Demand Small Business.

How Parent-Child Profiles Work

When Webtrends Analytics analyzes a parent profile, it parses the web activity data file and automatically splits the data into smaller files based on domains, URLs, SmartSource site IDs, or URL query parameters. A child profile is automatically created and analyzed for each subset of data.

Basic Analysis and Full-Featured Analysis

When you create a parent-child profile, you can select Full-Featured Analysis or Basic Analysis. Full-Featured Analysis provides a complete report set and a wide range of profile configuration options. You should use Full-Featured Analysis if you need to provide complete, detailed reporting for each individual site. However, Full-Featured Analysis also requires more system resources and processing time than Basic Analysis. Because it generates a smaller report set with less configurability, Basic Analysis provides faster performance and uses fewer system resources than Full-Featured Analysis. You should use Basic Analysis for efficient basic reporting on multiple sites with minimal configuration.

Basic Analysis profiles do not split a web activity data file into smaller files. Instead, they rely on the SmartSource tags embedded in web site pages to create a database into which Child profile data is aggregated during analysis. During data aggregation, SmartSource tags embedded in each page trigger the generation of content groups, campaign creation, and the application of other standard profile features.

Because these profiles differ in how they handle configuring advanced features, filters, campaigns, and other settings, you will find that when editing an Basic Analysis Parent profile, many user interface options will be unavailable or grayed out. The following settings cannot be configured in a Basic Analysis profile:

• Campaigns
• Content Groups
• Custom Reports
• Filters
• Home
• Intranet Domains
• On-Site Advertising
• Path Analysis
• Post-processing
• Pre-processing
• Scenario Analysis
• Site Configuration
• URL Search and Replace

Splitting Data for Child Profiles

Webtrends allows you to auto-discover child profiles using the following criteria:

• Domain Name
• SmartSource Site ID
• URL Query Parameter

When you specify any of these criteria for splitting, Webtrends Analytics automatically splits your web activity data into subsets, creates child profiles based on it, and, when you analyze the profile, creates reports for each child profile.

If you are using Full-Featured Analysis, you can also split data by specifying URLs. Splitting by URL is helpful in situations where you're segmenting your customers by directory. For example, your URLs may use a structure such as www.hostname.com/~customername. However, Webtrends does not support auto-discovery of new Child profiles based on URL. Splitting by URL requires you to manually configure each Child profile, specifying the URL strings to parse for in the log file. For more information, see “Manually Creating Child Profiles,” below.

Creating a Parent-Child Profile

You can create Parent profiles using the Add Profile wizard.

To add a parent-child profile:

1. In the left pane, click Administration > Web Analysis > Reports & Profiles.

2. Click New.

3. In the Profile Name dialog, select the Advanced profile options check box.

4. In the Profile Class dialog, click Parent-Child.

5. Click Full-Featured Analysis if you want to generate a complete set of reports. Click Basic Analysis if you want to generate a limited report set with minimum configuration. For more information, see “Basic Analysis and Full-Featured Analysis,” above.

6. In the Parent-Child Configuration dialog, select a method for identifying child profiles. The method you choose is used to split the data in your web activity data file into subsets.

   Note

   If you select URL as the method for identifying child profiles, Webtrends Analytics cannot automatically create child profiles for the parent profile. You must create child profiles manually. For more information, see “Manually Creating Child Profiles,” below. This option is not available for Basic Analysis profiles.

7. If you selected URL Query Parameter Value, select the query parameter you will use to split the data. Webtrends creates a new profile.

8. If you selected Domain, SmartSource Site ID (DCSID), or URL Query Parameter Value, Webtrends Analytics can “auto-discover” profiles by creating a profile each time it matches your split criteria. Specify how and when you want Webtrends Analytics to auto-create profiles for data sets it discovers:

   • To create a profile whenever a new domain, DCSID, or query parameter value is discovered, click Always.
   • To create a profile for all domains, DCSIDs, or query parameter values except for the ones you specify in the Identification Strings dialog, click Except for specified identification strings.
   • To create a profile only for specified domains, DCSIDs, or query parameter values, click Only for specified identification strings.

9. If you selected split criteria that can include multiple expressions, select the Child identification strings/patterns contain multiple items check box and specify the delimiter that separates each expression in the Delimiter text box. You cannot use multiple expressions with regular expressions, and you cannot use this setting with or Express Analysis. This setting is not available for Basic Analysis profiles.

10. If you selected a split method that allows auto-discovery, and you want Webtrends Analytics to create profiles based on your split criteria but not analyze them, select the For the next analysis pass, auto-discover profile configurations but do not split/analyze check box.

11. If you selected Basic Analysis, and you want to create a combined report including information about all your child profiles select the Include Basic Analysis Roll-up Report check box. This report is created in addition to the reports for individual child profiles.

Manually Creating Child Profiles

Full-featured Analysis Parent profiles that are configured to split the child profile by URL cannot automatically discover child profiles. After you create the Parent, you need to manually create each child profile.

To manually create child profiles:

1. In the left pane, click Administration > Web Analysis > Reports & Profiles.
2. Mouse over a parent profile and click New Child Profile on the Action menu.
3. Follow the steps in the profile wizard to configure your child profile. Make sure you specify the users you want to have access to reports. For more information, see “Providing User Access to Child Profiles,” below.

Customizing Child Profiles

To customize child profiles:

1. In the left pane, click Administration > Web Analysis > Reports & Profiles.
2. Expand the Parent profile to expose the list of Child profiles.
3. Mouse over a child profile and click Edit Child Profile on the Action menu.

Providing User Access to Child Profiles

Child profiles do not inherit the user rights of the parent profile. To provide user access to child profiles or to the reports generated based on them, edit the profile and specify the user rights you want to grant in the Profile Access dialog.

URL Parameter Analysis Reports for Basic Analysis Profiles

URL Parameter Analysis helps you understand requests for dynamic site content by allowing you to specify the query parameters of interest for each Basic Analysis profile. In order to maintain the performance of Basic Analysis profiles, you are limited to four Parameter Analysis reports for each profile.

To access URL Parameter Analysis settings:

1. In the left pane, click Administration > Web Analysis > Reports & Profiles.
2. Edit a Basic Analysis Parent profile.
3. Click Analysis > URL Parameter Analysis.

If you have a programming resource for creating Webtrends plug-ins, you can report on additional web traffic data using URL Parameter Analysis. Programmers can create Webtrends plug-ins that retrieve log file data such as referrers (or any other supported field) and append the data to the query string for Webtrends to use in analysis. Because Webtrends can report on any parameter in the query string, you can use the URL Parameter Analysis feature to report on the data your plug-in appends to the query string. For example, if your plug-in appends referrer data to the query string using a parameter named ref, you specify the ref parameter in your profile, and Webtrends analyzes it and shows the traffic in your Parameter Analysis report. For more information about creating Webtrends plug-ins, see “Webtrends ActiveX Plug-In API” and “Webtrends C Plug-In API” in the Programmer’s Reference.