RASMUS

Remote Access Service Monitor for Users and Services

Statistics tool

The WAYF Secretariat has, over the latest couple of years, collected detailed statistics on the actual use of WAYF, and has developed “RASMUS” as a tool for illustrating the statistical observations. RASMUS can show the number of users and logins per service and per institution for many different periods of time.

Financial gain calculator

“RASMUS” also knows e.g. the cost of each connection process, and thence is able to calculate and illustrate the financial gains with WAYF. Like how much a web service provider has saved by making just a single technical integation, i.e. one to WAYF, rather than integrating separately to each one of its customer institutions that are connected to WAYF as identity providers. And vice versa: how much an institution has saved by integrating just to WAYF rather than to each of the restricted web services used by it. “RASMUS” can also combine its financial figures and its usage statistics to show how much each user or each login has cost each service or each institution.

Web interface

“RASMUS” as a web service appears in the browser as a simple web page, divided into three sections, vertically:

    1. topmost: a dashboard, where a number of parameters can be toggled, e.g. the calendar period shown and the density of the measurement points;
    2. below that: a two-dimensional curve corresponding to the parameter values of the dashboard, time on the X-axis and no. of logins or users on the Y-axis;
    3. and at the foot: an enumeration of all services and institutions connected, each annotated with no. of logins and unique users for the period chosen, or with the integration costs. Here, services and institutions can be clicked on and off in the statistics display, so that statistics is only shown for those services actually accessed from a particular institution (or group of institutions). Each picked institution receives a curve of its own in the curve display located above the enumeration.

Notice: The “RASMUS” web interface does not work with Internet Explorer.

Who is allowed to use “RASMUS”?

Only the most general usage statistics is publicly available: the total no. of logins and users for the chosen period. Information on the traffic patterns and finance of particular services and institutions can be sensitive and is not released readily; it is for the internal use of the WAYF Secretariat. The public part of “RASMUS” is seen at https://rasmus.wayf.dk.

Access to “RASMUS” for WAYF institutions

Institutions connected to WAYF have the option of requesting access to the “RASMUS” statistics on their own WAYF usage: no. of users and logins during any period. Access is granted by each institution's user administrator, who will set a special eduPersonEntitlement value for entitled users. Administrators can either do this in the institution's local user registry (whence it will then be sent to WAYF whenever the user in question tries to access “RASMUS”), or they can, using the web service of WAYF Entitlement Management Service (WEMS), do it in WAYF's attribute store (whence WAYF will then collect it whenever the user attempts to log into “RASMUS”). Entitled users can access the restricted part of “RASMUS” at https://rasmus.wayf.dk/login.