[WEB4LIB] Software to log off-site application use

[Thomas Dowling]

> Good day,
>
> I am seeking information on software applications that would log the
> time a user is interacting with particular applications.  We are
> preparing to hire long-term temporary staff to create metadata for
> electronic publications, and it is possible that these staff could work
> off-site from home.   They would be interacting with a web-based form
> that will not be on our local server.  To facilitate this, I am required
> to identify a means to document that they work the hours they report
> beyond their timesheets.  Does anyone know of a solution for this?
>

<form action="foo.cgi">
<p>How many hours did you work?
<input name="hours"></p>

<input type="submit"
value="I certify that this is an honest and accurate report of
the number of hours I actually worked on this project">
</form>


Seriously, you can log statistics at the server end, the client end, or
some point in the middle that traffic must flow through.  From your
description of the setup, you control none of those.  You could arrange
with the server-side operation to get access to their logs, or you could
set up a proxy and try to force your staff to go through that.  But even
if you have an access log that shows when somebody touched the server or
proxy, that's a far cry from measuring when they started working and
stopped working without interruption.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu