Data & Usage

Data freshness, mapping transparency, usage patterns, and cache tools

Data & Usage is an administrative transparency area. It lives in the top navigation as Data & Usage.

Use it to answer:

  • What version of CEDAR is running?
  • Which loaded data tables are fresh for which terms?
  • Are any program, subject, or department mappings unresolved?
  • Which tabs and report types are people using?
  • Which cached outputs can be cleared after a data or logic change?

This tab is mostly for CEDAR maintainers, IR staff, and power users who need to understand the app’s data state.

Data Summary

Data Summary is embedded in the initial page as a plain table. Once the app page has loaded, opening it needs no server response, log scan, or interactive table initialization—even if another report is busy. A cold app still needs its initial startup; this does not bypass data loading on the first request.

The version comes from the newest entry in config/changelog.yml. The data status table reports row counts and term-level freshness for the major loaded tables, such as sections, students, programs, degrees, and faculty.

Use this after a data refresh or deployment to confirm that the app is reading the expected data snapshot.

Dates are source extract dates, not the time you opened the page. The separate app-snapshot timestamp identifies when the running app loaded them. Missing datasets remain visible as Not loaded and missing dates as Not available. The morning refresh reloads this snapshot; the table does not poll files while you browse. Join Integrity and usage analyses only start when opened.

Mappings

Mappings explains the department, subject, and program lookup tables CEDAR built at startup.

The most important panel is Mapping Issues. Rows listed there were unusual enough to need review. They are excluded from runtime lookup vectors until they are mapped or explicitly reviewed, so a questionable code does not silently leak into calculations.

Subtabs:

Subtab What it shows
Program to Dept Major/program code to department-code lookup used for home-major classification and transform fallbacks.
Subject to Dept Course subject prefixes mapped to CEDAR department codes.
Dept Names Department-code display names.
Reviewed Exceptions Program codes intentionally allowed to remain unmapped at startup.

Mapping issues do not necessarily mean the app is broken. They mean the mapping layer found codes that should be checked before someone treats an aggregation as complete.

Usage Overview

Usage Overview summarizes recent CEDAR activity for a selected date range.

The top dashboard shows:

  • active sessions;
  • reports run;
  • tab views;
  • logged errors;
  • total events;
  • downloads;
  • top department;
  • top course.

CEDAR logs browser sessions, not authenticated user identities. The active session count should not be interpreted as unique people.

The tables below the dashboard break usage down by tab, report type, department, course, campus scope, and day. Use this to see which parts of CEDAR are getting attention and where training or documentation might help.

Feature Details

Feature Details exposes the lower-level usage event log for a selected date range. It is useful when the overview says something happened and you need the specific event records behind it.

The preview shows the newest 500 matching events. Its summary includes all matching events, not just those visible in the preview. Refresh rereads the selected range, and the preview and summary share that read.

New usage logs rotate daily, including across midnight in long-running sessions. Older monthly files remain readable; date filtering happens before JSON parsing. At app startup, closed usage files older than the configured active window (90 days by default) move to logs/archive/ in the data directory instead of being deleted. Older date selections include those archives automatically. Archives remain part of the production data backup; timing logs are unchanged.

Use this for troubleshooting, not as a polished usage dashboard.

Cache

Cache Management clears cached outputs used by expensive tabs such as Course Dynamics, Dept Trends, Pathways, Open Seats, and Regstats.

Clear a cache when:

  • data has been corrected and the cache key would not naturally change;
  • a logic fix changes the meaning or shape of cached output;
  • a production smoke test suggests the app is serving stale output.

Normal data refreshes should invalidate most caches through data hashes or date-based keys. Manual cache clearing is a maintenance tool, not something ordinary users should need.

For deploy steps, see the release runbook.

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CEDAR is open source software for higher education analytics.