topic Re: Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics in SAS Viya

Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics

sergie89 — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 13:33:21 GMT

I'm looking for statistics on the usage of reports in SAS Viya Visual Analytics. I understand that this can be obtained by enabling auditing, but I was wondering: is it also possible to extract this information from the sas visualanalytics log file, or from any other log files?

Re: Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics

BrunoMueller — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:16:49 GMT

Please provide the version information on SAS Viya you are interessted in.

As of SAS Viya 20nn.nn there are no longer traditional log files.

The information on which reports have been accessed, can be returned using the sas-viya audit list-activities command (tested with Stable 2025.06).

Here is an example:

sas-viya --output json audit list-activities --application-contains Visual --sort-by timeStamp --limit 100 --action read --user-interaction-contains Open

The command will return JSON output. A activity entry will look like below.

    {
      "action": "read",
      "administrativeAction": false,
      "application": "SAS® Visual Analytics",
      "correlator": "dfd7180f-c19f-4dd8-847a-2b35f1dbebc3",
      "httpContext": {
        "method": "GET",
        "statusCode": 200
      },
      "id": "7fca62e6-ccc1-4aba-8897-2d10efdffb1a",
      "links": [
        {
          "href": "/audit/activities/7fca62e6-ccc1-4aba-8897-2d10efdffb1a",
          "method": "GET",
          "rel": "self",
          "type": "application/vnd.sas.audit.activity",
          "uri": "/audit/activities/7fca62e6-ccc1-4aba-8897-2d10efdffb1a"
        }
      ],
      "objectName": "cars-simple",
      "objectType": "report",
      "properties": {
        "referringApplication": "SASVisualAnalytics"
      },
      "references": [],
      "secure": true,
      "serviceName": "reports",
      "sessionId": "a8bbbb4b-d8f0-4e38-ab06-df83840d430b",
      "state": "success",
      "timeStamp": "2025-07-16T13:43:50.037Z",
      "type": "resource",
      "uri": "/reports/reports/130a9b58-d93b-4f24-8478-ff02d416ff3b/content",
      "user": "sean",
      "userInteraction": "Open report cars-simple",
      "version": 8
    }

A non admin user will only see his entries.

A SAS admin will see all entries

There are many more options to the mentioned command. For instance to select a specifc time window using --after and|or --before. Note the --limit option, by default only 50 entries are returned.

Re: Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics

sergie89 — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:23:49 GMT

Hi @BrunoMueller

We're still on version V.03.05. It's quite an old version by now.

Re: Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics

gwootton — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:31:02 GMT

You could look at the /var/log/httpd/ssl_access_log for /reports/reports/*/content

Re: Alternative to Auditing for Report Usage in SAS Viya Visual Analytics

BrunoMueller — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:22:23 GMT

In SAS Viya 3.5 the activity entries are not available.

See this article https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Auditing-Report-Actions-in-SAS-Viya-3-x/ta-p/959712 by for more details on auditing report operations.

Or go the way as outline by @gwootton .