This guide has been produced to accompany Managing content in your workspace and we encourage you to read that first.
In this guide we will outline a few options that are available to workspace managers to help identify out of date content for removal. Please read through and pick the methods that you think will work best in your workspace.
Contents:
- First steps
- Document downloads and previews report
- Making use of metrics and the workspace content report
- Further reading
1. First steps
If you know that something is no longer useful to your members, delete it. If you are unsure, there are some steps you can take.
Remember that most workspace items will allow you to check your page view metric for that item while you are on the page:
- Navigate to an item you are interested in and go to 'View properties and permissions'
- If available, you will see the total number of views since May 2022 as well as views for the current month in the form of a bar graph. Hover over the bars for totals.
These are the same numbers as displayed on the metrics page for your workspace. Metrics were introduced in May 2022 and so there is no data available prior to this point.
For larger workspaces or if you want to see a comparison for different items in your workspace, take a look at the following methods.
2. Document downloads and previews report
If your workspace is primarily used for sharing documents and you are not interested in the page views for items like forums, folder dashboards, blogs and events then following these steps will help you identify items that potentially need removing from your workspace.
To access your document downloads and previews report:
- Select 'Manage This Workspace' (three cogs icon).
- From the drop-down select 'Reports', and the click the 'Document Downloads And Previews' report.
- Choose your preferred format and press 'run report'. If the report is over 200,000 rows you will need to add some filters before running.
- This report will show an entry for every time a document has been downloaded or previewed by one of your workspace members. Review the information to help make informed decisions about items to remove from your workspace.
3. Making use of metrics and the workspace content report
This part of the guide has been produced to help workspace managers get a better understanding of how frequently content in their workspace is being viewed. You can do this by combining information from the workspace content report with the workspace metrics.
By following steps 3.1 and 3.2 below, it is possible to cross reference page views for your workspace against all the information contained in the content report; this includes forums, folder dashboards and other workspace items in addition to documents.
Remember, if you are just interested in document downloads and previews, these are recorded separately and it will be simpler to use a different report. To review this information you can use the document downloads and previews report from the reports pinned to the top of the list by the Futures team.
3.1 Export your workspace content report
To get started, run your workspace content report. To run the pinned report created by the Futures team, follow the steps below. You may already have a pre-existing or customised report that you wish to use, if this is the case, scroll down to the next part of this guide.
- Go to the workspace you want to run the report for. Select 'Manage workspace' (three cogs icon) in the top right. From the drop-down, select 'Reports'.
- At the top of the list you will see the pinned 'Workspace Content' report, click the play icon to run the report. This will download the report to your device.
- Rename and save the report in line with your organisation's records management policy. Open and review the report.
This report shows you information about each item in your workspace including: a link to the item itself, who created it and when, permissions settings and lots of other useful information. The report has been adjusted to filter out individual forum posts but it is possible to report on these if you are interested.
Note: If you want to make changes to the report then click the report copy icon next to the appropriate report on your workspace reports page (Go to workspace settings then Reports). This will take you to the editing options. From here you can rename the report and add your own information, filters, fields or conditions. For more help with building Futures reports take a look at our guides: Reporting for workspace managers
3.2 Metrics
The content views metric shows how many views each item in your workspace has had in a given time period going back to May 2022. The next step in our guide is to cross reference the workspace content report with the content views.
You will need to check each workspace item individually, it is therefore important to decide on a suitable order in which to proceed, particularly if your workspace has a lot of content.
It will depend on your needs but we advise starting with older items. You could also start with a section in your workspace you are particularly interested in, a certain permission level, item type or folder path - Your exported Workspace Content report can be sorted by and filtered for all of these. You should also make sure to check workspace items that are related to your strategic priorities, or by items that you think might be out of date (for example: start with items with the oldest creation or activity date).
When you've decided what to check:
- From your Workspace Content report, copy the 'Item Name' of the item you want to check - this will be in column C if you have used our pinned report.
- Go to the 'Manage workspace' (three cogs icon) in the top right and select 'Metrics'.
- There is lots of information in this area but for our purposes, select 'Content views', choose your date range and then in the search box, paste the 'Item Name' that you have copied. The moderated views column is the one you want to pay attention to, this has been adjusted to allow for repeat visits within a certain timeframe.
- Repeat these steps as appropriate.
For a more sophisticated analysis, depending on your skill level and resource, you can also export the metrics information to Excel.
The metrics pages will not display zero values. If you see the message "There is no data available." - This means that the content has not been viewed during the selected time period (or there is a spelling mistake in your search term).
4 Further reading
For further reading on managing content in your workspace and reporting please see these guides:
Using and managing your reports
If you have any questions relating to this guide then please contact Futures support and we will be happy to help.