Remote Access Service Monitor for Users and Services
Statistics tool
WAYF continuously collects detailed statistics on logins to services in the identity federation when users sign in through their institutions. RASMUS is a web-based tool for visualising these usage statistics.
RASMUS shows how the number of logins and unique users develops over time. Statistics can be displayed for the federation as a whole or for a particular service or user organisation. This makes it possible both to obtain an overall picture of activity in the federation and to examine how that activity is distributed among the participating services and institutions.
Statistics over time
RASMUS presents the statistics as bar charts, with time along the x-axis and the number of logins or users along the y-axis. Users can switch between four views with different time resolutions: years, months, days and hours.
The yearly and monthly views make it possible to follow developments in login activity over a longer period. The daily view shows activity during approximately the past 90 days, while the hourly view shows activity hour by hour during the past week. For example, users can examine differences between weekdays and weekends or between daytime and night-time activity.
Two charts are displayed: one showing the number of logins and one showing the number of unique users. Hovering over a bar displays the corresponding figure. Clicking a bar also selects a particular time period for the detailed traffic breakdown shown below.
Note that user counts are calculated separately for each combination of service and user organisation. When figures are aggregated across combinations, the same person may therefore be counted more than once in the total number of unique users.
Web interface
In a browser, RASMUS appears as a simple web page divided vertically into three sections:
- At the top: a navigation panel for choosing whether statistics are shown by year, month, day or hour.
- Below: two bar charts showing developments in the number of logins and the number of unique users, respectively.
- At the bottom: for users with privileged access, an interactive overview of services and user organisations showing how login activity is distributed between them.
The bottom section is designed as a so-called butterfly view: services are listed on the left, identity providers on the right, and WAYF in the centre. Green connection lines illustrate how the services and identity providers are connected through WAYF.
The number of logins is shown next to each service and user organisation. The lists are sorted by traffic volume, with the most frequently used services and the most active user organisations at the top. Hovering over a name also displays additional technical information about the service or user organisation in question.
Users can select a particular institution and see which services its users have logged in to and how often. Conversely, they can select a particular service and see which institutions its users have logged in from. These selections can also be combined with a specific time period, such as a single month, making it possible to examine login activity between services and institutions during that period.
For example, users can select the Royal Danish Library service and view its login activity over the years together with a list of the institutions whose users have accessed the service. Clicking the bar for March 2021 will then make the butterfly view show how the library's logins were distributed among the institutions during that particular month.
Clicking WAYF in the centre of the butterfly clears the selected service or institution and returns to the overall statistics.
Who may use RASMUS?
The overall statistics for the WAYF federation are publicly available. Anyone can view developments in the total number of logins and user counts for connected services without logging in.
Traffic information for individual services and institutions, however, may be sensitive and is therefore access-restricted.
Users from institutions with privileged access can view statistics on their own institution's users logging in to services in the federation, including which services those users have accessed. WAYF federation administrators have access to the complete statistics for all services and user organisations and can examine traffic between them.
Access to RASMUS for WAYF institutions
Institutions connected to WAYF can contact the WAYF secretariat to request access to detailed statistics on their own users' logins to connected services.
Access is granted to designated users, who log in to RASMUS through their institution. Once logged in, they can use RASMUS' interactive views within the scope of their assigned access rights.
RASMUS is available at https://rasmus.wayf.dk. The public statistics are available to everyone, while users with special access rights can log in using the login button on the site or directly at https://rasmus.wayf.dk/sso.