WinWhatWhere

Do you want to know all the cool Web sites your employees are surfing to, but you're afraid to ask? Do you like to know how much time your employees spend running Doom instead of working on billable projects? If your users' computer activities concern you, you need WinWhatWhere.

The latest incarnation (version 97.1) of this usage and time monitor supports Windows NT, Windows 95, or Windows 3.x. Unlike monitoring programs that just capture the time when you start and finish executing a program, WinWhatWhere provides a great deal more information, including the program name, caption of the active window, start and elapsed times, keystrokes while the user is in the application, mouse clicks, and mouse travel distances. If you run WinWhatWhere in a network environment, the software also captures network user ID and workstation name.

WinHow
Installing WinWhatWhere is easy. The software package contains two high-density diskettes. To install the single-user version of the software quickly, run install.exe on your computer and accept all the defaults. For network installation, follow the same steps, except choose to make the extracted files accessible through a new or common share. After you install the software on the server, you do not need to run the install program on individ-ual workstations; WinWhatWhere will automatically install the necessary files on the client computers.

Once you complete installation of the execuTables, run the wwwsetup.exe program to finish the program setup. This program lets you tailor how WinWhatWhere's data collection module, w3.exe, will function for a single user or multiple users. The setup program uses a tabbed dialog to switch between the product's functional areas. To enable mouse tracking, for instance, you click on the Mouse tab and select the appropriate option in the dialog window. You can click the Startup tab to automatically start WinWhatWhere whenever Windows loads (single-user version only).

WinWhatWhere can also run w3.exe in a completely stealth manner. Several configuration options let you tailor how the software will behave with the user. The lowest level of stealth activity is Normal, and the software runs in a typical window users can view. The highest level is Hidden, and the execuTable program is viewable only in the Windows Task Manager. You can select the Block All Exits check box to prevent users from shutting down the w3.exe program. WinWhatWhere also includes a utility, W3 Deep Cover, that lets you rename the w3.exe program to confuse sneaky users who want to interfere with your intelligence gathering.

WinWhat
Data collection is only one-half of WinWhatWhere's features. The software also includes two reporting utilities: W3 History and W3 Quick View & Export. The history program lets you generate reports on user or application activities. It also lets you select data from the database, apply filters to the data, view detail information about the database records, and generate database synopsis reports.

The Quick View & Export utility has two primary functions. The first function, Quick View, lets you quickly view the detail data in the database. This function has no filtering or special selection capabilities; you merely select the database file, and a list of detail records appears in a Detail window. Screen 1 shows a typical view of detail records. The utility's second function, Export, does not offer a significant number of options. You can select the fields you want to export and the type of file you want to create; choose between comma-separated variable-length (CSV) or tab-separated text. This feature lets you move WinWhatWhere's data into a sophisticated database where you can create more detailed reports than those the History program supplies.

WinWin
WinWhatWhere is a helpful, easy-to-use program for tracking computer usage. The software's reporting and data exporting capabilities let you create basic reports on how your resources are being used, and you can export data to create a comprehensive, long-term database on system usage.

Network and site licenses for the software are available, and the product comes with technical support at no extra cost. You can download a free trial version of the single-user product and full network release of WinWhatWhere at the company's Web site.