There are a few qualifications for where you should install the app:
The Splunk Activity App (SA) was written to help Splunk champions understand and grow Splunk usage within their organizations, in addition to better understanding the activities and personas of their users. There are three primary areas of functionality:
This includes the Search Overview dashboard, the Per-User dashboard, and the Per-Search dashboard. Together, these allow you to view the top users in the environment, and understand some of how they use the system.
Questions you can answer here include “what users are chewing up searches?” “Who is running realtime searches today?” “How complex is this user’s grasp of the search language?” “How many errors do they receive?” “How long does it take them to run a search, and over what timeframe?” “Who is exporting or sharing search results?”
The Find Users dashboard also allows you to group particular sets of users based on search metrics or LDAP metrics. This is useful if you want to invite your local users to a SplunkLive event! The Find Searches dashboard allow you to find problematic searches or searches that meet a particular characteristic.
The Organizational Adoption dashboard shows metrics relating to how people within the organization are using Splunk.
By tagging users, you can group and track cohorts of users. This is great for understanding the usage of recently onboarded or trained users. You might also tag VIPs to keep a special eye on them.
A common question is: “How is this different from Splunk on Splunk (SOS)?” SOS is a fantastic app that you should have installed and SA doesn’t try to rival its power for monitoring and troubleshooting. While there are a few areas of overlap (and a few reports borrowed), SA isn’t primarily a troubleshooting app.
Overall, it is the goal of this app to improve the ease of tracking consumption, and increasing adoption of Splunk. Please put any questions / suggestions on Splunk Answers.
Overall thank you to everyone involved in the creation of SA, and those who contributed to base understanding, including the VMware App Team (and their amazing hierarchy), the SOS team, the NorCal Majors SE team, Splunk Answers, and everyone who ever answered a python question on Google.
Installing the Splunk Activity App is more complex than the typical app, but you will be guided by a setup wizard. There are four sections to set up in the app:
-LDAP
-LDAP Management
-App Configuration
-Datastore / Backfill
While not required, it is recommended that you leverage LDAP to enrich the data in the app for Splunk Activity. Much of the most interesting functionality, in particular the Org Chart tree view is predicated on LDAP information. Fortunatley, getting LDAP information into Splunk is easy! You have three options for configuring this section:
SA-ldapsearch Lookup: This is usually the best option. Splunk has a search addon (called either SA-ldapsearch or Splunk Support for Active Directory) for directly querying LDAP, which is widely used and fully supported. Find it here. You install the app, and follow the configuration settings listed in the docs (here). Once configured, you can enable the scheduled search to periodically poll LDAP and update LDAPSearch.csv (linked to from the setup page).
Existing LDAP Lookup: This option presumes that you have an existing LDAP dump created by the method described in the previous option. This should be a CSV stored at $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/splunk_activity/lookups/LDAPSearch.csv. This method makes the most sense if your production Splunk environment doesn't have the right version of Java for SA-ldapsearch or if you have a policy that prevents you from storing base64 encoded (or just plain text) credentials for an LDAP user on the Splunk server, as required by SA-ldapsearch. This is also the most QA'd option as that is how the development and staging environments are configured.
No LDAP: If you have no desire to integrate with LDAP, select this option. You can always come back and change it -- all LDAP components are run at search time. Note: you must select No LDAP if you don't wish to use LDAP. Leaving this section unconfigured will prevent you from using the app.
This piece is very straightforward. If you elect to use LDAP (as you should), you must ensure that the scheduled search creating the LDAPMgmtChain is enabled. This section will also check to ensure that LDAPSearch.csv is populated.
The setup page on the app will walk you through the configuration process.
If you experience any issues, please don't hesitate to go to Splunk Answers and search for your issue, or ask a new question. Make sure to tag Splunk Activity, and you should get a fast response.
3.0.1 Release Notes:
Fixes to missing tokens on the Find Users and Find Searches dashboards.
Removing some unused files
1.3.1 Release Notes:
Fixes to missing tokens on the Find Users and Find Searches dashboards.
Removing some unused files
3.0.0 Release Notes:
Overhaul of back-end. No more tscollect. Now Summary Indexing + Data Model Acceleration. Also smoothly handles gaps, allows you to re-backfill over the same window without duplicates, and more.
Can convert old-style backfills to the new style.
Update of all dashboards
Overhaul of setup interface
Better Monitoring
Dramatically Improved User Timeline Feature
Improved handling of shares and exports
Works on SHC
Works on SplunkCloud
Works on Splunk 7.1 - 8.x (probably also works back to 6.6)
Clarify in new setup that LDAP is not required
Variety of bug fixes
* Removed dashboards that no longer work (particularly the organizational hierarchy / tree view dashboard, unfortunately)
3.0.0 has a lot of new code! Please test in a dev environment, or work with your Splunk contact to ensure a smooth experience.
Release Notes for 2.2.13:
* Removed the Organizational Hierarchy Dashboard, which broken Splunk 8. Sorry everyone!
Work is ongoing for a version of the app which supports recent versions of Splunk overall.
Updated to work with Splunk 6.6! (Probably not backwards compatible with 6.5 or below..)
2.2.11 Release Notes:
* Added a default.meta -- turns out that Splunk_TA_nix app if renamed will overwrite the setup page, preventing people from getting to the app setup. Added an import statement to prevent that from recurring.
* Also adding 6.5 supportability. I'm not currently aware of any issues, though please let me know if you run into any.
Fixing a permissions issue. Sorry everyone!
Minor cleanup, preparing for certification. Added 6.4 support
2.2.7:
Bug Fix where SearchHead wasn't defined in data population, which broke the several dashboards.
2.2:
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support!
2.2.6:
Bug Fix for older systems without data populatin
2.2:
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support!
2.2.5:
Major Bug Fix Bundle. 63 fixes! Primarily targeting distributed setups where things randomly didn't work, or the setup dashboard wouldn't load.
2.2:
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support!
2.2.4:
New Icon
Provisional 6.3 Support
2.2.3:
Bug Fixes and Doc Fixes
2.2:
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support! (Someone should talk to the author about renaming that..)
2.2.3:
Bug Fixes and Doc Fixes
2.2:
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support! (Someone should talk to the author about renaming that..)
2.2.2:
Minor Bug Fix
2.2:
16+ misc bug fixes (thank you to everyone who contributed bug reports via the support request feature and via email!)
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
* Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support! (Someone should talk to the author about renaming that..)
Significant new release in three areas:
16+ misc bug fixes (thank you to everyone who contributed bug reports via the support request feature and via email!)
Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support! (Someone should talk to the author about renaming that..)
Significant new release in three areas:
* 15+ misc bug fixes (thank you to everyone who contributed bug reports via the support request feature and via email!)
* Major improvements to the D3 Organizational Hierarchy chart, allowing you to search for a user directly, adding overlay, and more.
* Major re-working of the search data backfill. This has now been tested in a new largest organization ever, exceeding 1.6M Searches per day (16 searches launched per second!)
* Added logic to automatically recover from past bugs with the search data backfill -- upgrade and it should automatically work!
Please report bugs, request new features, or give feedback on how you're using this via the support request feature! Setup -> Support Request. Not just for support! (Someone should talk to the author about renaming that..)
Significant new release including:
Support! If you run into problems, submit a support request through the UI or at http://www.davidveuve.com/search_activity/
Splunk 6.1 Compatability!
New UI for Main Page! (Please let me know if it's better or worse)
Overhauled Search Backfill Script! Should address many issues and improve supportability
Overhauled TSIDX Troubleshooting dashboard! Easily troubleshoot issues (or submit a support request and I can troubleshoot)
Support for non-standard splunkd ports!
** Many many bug fixes. Now you can submit bug fixes that will actually be tracked thanks to the support system
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