Seeking dashboard statistics with page views by staff users excluded

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dwallner, a new Discourse administrator, asks whether staff/admin user activity is excluded from the /admin dashboard metrics — particularly page views — and whether Data Explorer is the current recommended solution for filtering out staff traffic. They reference older posts from 2020 suggesting Data Explorer is needed for such filtering and note that while their Business-plan forum has Data Explorer available, their Pro-plan forum does not, with the plugin appearing locked. In follow-up, dwallner shares additional recent resources, but none clearly confirm whether staff page views are excluded by default. tobiaseigen confirms Data Explorer is only available on Business plans and up, and advises contacting team@discourse.org for hosted support. JammyDodger notes this is an ongoing feature request, referencing this topic and others, and suggests bumping the thread to increase its priority. The consensus is that staff activity is not automatically filtered in the standard dashboard, and custom reporting via Data Explorer (if available) or feature requests are the current paths forward.

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Greetings, friendly Discourse community! My organization just launched our first two forums, and this is my first support question on meta - so please let me know if I make any n00b mistakes or could have formatted this or tagged it better, etc.

I am curious, as a new administrator, whether the behaviour of Staff (admin) users is filtered out in the “Community Health” dashboard metrics displayed at /admin, or if there is any setting/option to do so?

I tried searching first to answer this, and I found:

I’m curious what the current state of this is, in 2024?

Do the /admin dashboard reports currently include administration and/or moderation usage in the mix with all other authenticated login page views? If they do, is Data Explorer still the best way to attempt to view stats that exclude staff?

I suppose I should also ask, on a related note, if one has a Pro plan on Discourse.org can one use Data Explorer ? We have one of our forums on a Business plan and it appears to have Data Explorer ready to turn on by flicking a toggle switch, but our other (lower traffic) forum is on a Pro plan and in the same place in it’s settings, it says that plugin must be unlocked?

Thanks very much for patience with a new user, and please feel free to point me at any documentation I missed that could have explained this to me. :nerd_face:

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Since I’m a new user, I wasn’t able to include more links in the initial post above, but here are a few related resources I also found…they’re more recent and discuss more details and some improvements, but unless I’m missing something they do not clarify whether page views by your own staff can be excluded or not (?).

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Hi Drew! Were you able to get an answer to your question? As a hosted customer, you can also always reach out to team@discourse.org to get personalized support.

You likely found this out by now but data explorer is only available on the business plan and up. That is indeed the way to create customized reports, for example to exclude specific groups.

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I think there is an open Contribute > Feature request for this that did get some traction:

ETA: Which was also handily linked in the OP, that I overlooked at first. :slight_smile: I think giving that topic a bump with more people requesting the same thing can often make the request more likely to be picked up. Especially in this case where it looked quite close to being implemented. :crossed_fingers:

And a couple more topics with similar requests:

Exclude staff from statistics

Can we create the Consolidated Page View Chart without Admins?