Thread Info
  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 1 subscriber
  • Views 15980 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Suggested
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Device Control reporting wastes paper?

Fairport

We are evaluating the use of Device Control for the first time and have activated a 'report only' policy so that we can assess what devices are in use on our network.

Today I thought I'd print out a report on paper for review purposes.

What could easily have been a nine page report has ended up requiring eighteen pages - primarily because the report title, description and summary which amounts to half a page is repeated on every single page!

Is this normal?

:55048


This thread was automatically locked due to age.
  • 0

    Hello Fairport,

    guess you are using the Alert and event history. The behaviour is "normal". You can reduce the number of Total items detected ... lines (which frees some space) by selecting just Device control in the report's Properties->Configuration.

    Christian

    :55074
  • 0

    Yes - I've already done that.

    What remains still seems to be a pointless waste of paper.

    :55075
  • 0

    Hello Fairport,

    a pointless waste of paper

    :smileytongue: isn't that generally true for reports? :smileywink:

    If you schedule the report you can choose from several formats and modify the layout before printing. Another option would be to export the events as CSV.

    HTH

    Christian.

    :55078
  • 0

    Output to Excel certainly yields less wasteful results :smileyhappy:

    Still don't see the point of repeating redundant information on every page if the output is in paper form though.

    Now all I need are reports that actually yield the basic data I actually need.

    Alert and Event History, filtered to include just Device Control events, sorted by Computer name gets me almost what I need - but doesn't seem to include the logged-in user at the time the event occured - even though I know that data is in there :smileysad:

    So now I have to work back through that report and pencil the user names in - unless there's a trick I've missed?

    :55081
  • 0

    Hello Fairport,

    Still don't see the point ...

    me neither - but I've heard that Reports is primarily for managers, not techies :smileytongue:

    the logged-in user

    Try the CSV export from the Event Viewer - it exports in the sort order used (although you can't sort by multiple columns). 

    Christian 

    :55082
  • 0

    Sadly the CSV does not seem to contain the name of the logged-in user either :smileysad:

    I expect Sophos has some rational explanation for why that is.

    :55083
  • 0

    Hello Fairport,

    the CSV exported from the Event Viewer (Events in the menu bar -> Device Control Events ...) does have (or should have) the user in the second column- Looks like this:

    "Date/time","User","Computer","Model","Type","Status","Device ID"
"10/20/2014 7:36:17 AM","","macadmin","Apple Wireless Network Adapter (802.11 a/b/g/n)","Wireless","Unknown action","INS:0-AIRPORT-EC35863A 44B6"
"11/26/2014 11:03:04 AM","Administrator’’’’s MacBook Pro\oldman","someMac","Apple Wireless Network Adapter (802.11 a/b/g/n)","Wireless","Unknown action","INS:0-AIRPORT-68A86D41 8C4C"

     Note that there is (like in the first data line) not always an associated user.

    Christian

    :55084
  • 0

    Ah - my bad - sorry - I was outputting a report in CSV format rather than exporting the events from the event viewer in CSV format - which explains why I didn't see the name of the logged-in user.

    This of course proves that the information is available to be reported on - yet missing from the report for some reason :smileysad:

    Thanks for your help :smileyhappy:

    :55086