CODEWITHSUNDEEP
excelvbasecurity
Marius Katinas
Marius Katinas

Reputation: 470

Storing excel add-in usage data

This question may be opinion based, but please bear with me.

Context: Company has asked me to develop an Excel add-in, that all employees will use. I use a shared network folder to store the add-in. All users just creates an reference to that add-in and loads it from network.

Problem: Company would like to see usage statistics of the add-in. Basically, lets say the add-in has 10 specific functions, which are invoked by a press of a button. Each time a button is pressed, this information should be stored.

Question: Where to store this information?

I added a new function and included in all methods that would just write the number of each function use of a session in the add-in sheet, and on the workbook_close method, print everything to a .txt file and save it to the network drive and run reports based on that.

Now the problem is that everyone has access to the network drive, can accidentally delete the log files or just plainly change them for whatever reason. I can overcome the changing issue by encrypting the log files, so users won't know what's inside them, but then they can just delete them by thinking that it's trash.

It all comes to this: where to store user usage data, which would be accessible to me or my manager, to use that data for reports, without anyone else being able to interfere with the data?

By interfering I don't mean that anybody would do that of spite, but an accidental deletion, or just a cleanup of the network folders.

My idea: run a script to monitor the log folder, and when a new file appears, move it to a safe directory and remove it from the original folder. But it won't work if I turn off my computer and seems to me that I'm missing something and over-complicating this issue.

Thank you for your time.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 31

Answers (1)

Gary's Student
Gary's Student

Reputation: 96753

Let Company decide.

Present the issue to your client, along with all the options and risks and get their feedback. In this way:

  1. you will get information if they have a strong preference
  2. make the client aware of any risks
  3. limit your liability in case something "bad" happens

Note:

This is not the proper forum for this question. Expect it to be Closed soon.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions