Tracking Dashboard Usage: Extracting Events Like Downloads or Chart Expansions from Aperture

Marco Antonio da Silva
Marco Antonio da Silva Contributor
in General

Hi everyone,

Has anyone worked on pulling data from the Aperture database to track how users interact with dashboards? Specifically, I’m looking to capture events like dataset downloads or chart expansions. Any solutions or past requests for something similar?

Answers

  • Simms, Henry
    Simms, Henry Administrator

    Users with Installation Manager permissions can access event logs, either as file downloads or via the API, but these events do not cover "passive" actions like viewing a Dashboard (as opposed to "active" actions like modifying the Dashboard, or downloading data.

    So for Dataset downloads, you'll see an Event records created with this operation:

    EventType

    Operation

    EventDate

    Message

    TargetObjectType

    TargetObjectName

    Download file

    Download Dataset results

    10/06/2026 12:33

    Download Dataset 'Customer' results

    Dataset

    Customer

    Event logs show which Dataset was downloaded, but not that this Dataset was accessed via a specific Dashboard. It would show when a Dashboard was updated, or a component such as a Chart was published.

    An Event record is not created when a user views a dashboard. Doing so requires them to access a specific URL (eg https://aperturedatastudio.global/1/7/dashboard/4), and the application log (datastudio.log) could be configured to include URL navigation (at DEBUG level) but it would not be associated with user information, so unlikely to be useful (in addition to generating a huge amount of logging).

    Interested to know if anyone else has any suggestions for monitoring user-level access to view specific objects.

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