Virtual Data Room User Activity Reports

Mar 01, 2019 Virtual Data Room User Activity Reports

The purpose of a Virtual Data Room (VDR) is to facilitate the sharing of sensitive documents and files. As there are often many different parties using the VDR, one essential feature a site administrator needs is user activity reports to help understand and facilitate the workflow process.

Typically, Virtual Data Room reports are set up as follows.

 For User activity

1. Search all user logins to a site or specific VDR.
2. Search on a specific User to identify that user’s login history.
3. Search all users to see what documents have been viewed or opened.
4. Search specific users to see what documents a specific user has viewed.
5. Search to identify any bulk downloads of folders by users.

For Site administrator activity

1. Search on all Site Administrator activity to identify what administrative actions have been taken
2. Search on a specific Site Administrator to identify what actions that administrator has taken.

Report Time Period

All reports can be customized for a designated time period. You simply enter your start and end date to define the data parameters. The reports can then be exported to an Excel or PDF document for review and distribution.

Check if your vendor will allow design customization so that you can add your logo to the published report.

Interpreting Virtual Data Room Reports

Here are some examples of the kinds of user activity report data that can provide meaningful feedback to a site administrator managing a VDR project.

1. Which users have logged into the site the most? This can give some indication of the level of interest.
2. Which users have not logged in at all and need a reminder or a call?
3. Did a user open a specific document?

A few words of caution:

When interpreting report data, it’s important to keep the results in perspective. Many users choose to download the entire document collection and then do their perusal of the data offline. If this is the case, their user activity will be quite sparse, if at all.

Even though documents are marked in the reports as having been opened, there is no way to know if the user actually read the document.

Some users log in frequently. This could indicate strong interest, but it could also mean they are not spending much time in the data room due to interruptions that cause them to log out and log back in frequently.

Shown below are some Site Administrator activities that can be monitored in a Virtual Data Room.

Summary

User activity reports are important and can occassionally provide valuable and vital feedback. One idrShare client was sued by a seller who claimed that the environmental disclosure documents were not included in the VDR document collection. Since an activity report recorded that the litigating party did indeed open the environmental documents on a specific day and time, the lawsuit was dropped.

It’s important to keep the value of the reporting data in perspective. It’s a userful tool that when combined with other data points can help Virtual Data Room adminsitrators better manage a workflow built around the data room documents.

Sample Login Activity Report

About the author: 

Mickey Henry is the owner of idrShare, LLC and supports investment banks, advisory firms and corporations by building and hosting customer designed virtual data rooms. Mr. Henry has over 18 years’ experience in providing data rooms and provides passionate support to his clients.