Live Conversation Monitoring + Reporting

Openfire Openfire Support
1

Hello all,

I am a system admin for an enterprise domain network comprised of 200+ users/workstations. We currently use Openfire 3.7.1 with the embedded DB and the plugins Content Filter, Monitoring Service, and Search.

(1) Currently, under Server > Archiving > Conversations, we can view a list of current active conversations, but aside from searching via Search Archive, there is no way that I am aware to actively view the content of these conversations. Is this something that can be done? We would like the ability to have supervisors invisibly “jump in” to the conversation to monitor what is being said as needed. We would also like the ability for supervisors to monitor MUC but remain hidden from users within the MUC (some type of invisible moderation).

(2) Under Server > Statistics, there is a general breakdown of things such as Current Users, Active Conversations, etc. We would like the ability to view custom reports, such as Top Users By Usage. From what I gather after scouring the forums, querying the embedded DB requires taking the server offline (which is less than ideal). My question is then, is there a plugin that would allow this functionality, or would we be better off migrating to mySQL (which we use currently for other internal applications)?

Thank you in advance for your help!

2

  1. There is no such option in Openfire and Monitoring Service archive. Frankly, i think this is even against xmpp standards to be able to see a chat content without loggin into a room. So probably it would have to be a hack and a custom version of Openfire, or a plugin.

  2. I haven’t used Monitoring Service for years, so i don’t remember exactly, but if you don’t find such reports, then probably there are no such type of reports. I haven’t heard of any other plugin for such reports. Speaking about the DB it is advised not to use the embedded one in the production (though i’m doing this myself, because it is easier and i don’t have to setup MySQL just for that:)). If you can use MySQL, especially as you use Monitoring Service and your database will grow huge quickly, then i suggest to switch. MySQL will aslo allow more options for pulling needed information right from the database.

3

We will be migrating the embedded DB to mySQL in the next few weeks, as management has indicated they need this additional reporting functionality.

As for the invisible moderation, I will advise my team that this is a limitation of XMPP, and see if they want to task our development staff with writing code to make it happen. Chances are, they will dismiss the idea entirely, but of course it’s my job to find out if it can be done, one way or another.

I appreciate your quick and definitive response! Take care.

4

Update: We migrated to SQL Server. Forgot that the default transaction log size is 2TB, and filled up the server’s hard disk in a week or two! Haha. Had to dial it back down to about 10GB, but so far so good. Not sure about live monitoring, but our development team will be working on a web-based interface for pulling transcripts one of these days.

Thanks again for your help, wroot.