With the publication last week of my post on publishing directly to a SharePoint 2010 blog from Word –an update of sorts to an older post that was dedicated to the same topic using SharePoint 2007– it has occurred to me that I spent years writing “how-to” posts for MOSS 2007, but with my shifting responsibilities over the past couple of years, my “2010” output in that regard has been rather woeful.

I still have those other responsibilities (and more besides) on my plate, but the combination of how much fun it was to step back into my well-worn SharePoint Blank shoes last week, and the realization of just how badly I’ve underserved the 2010 end-user community in this blog to date, I’ve decided to make an executive decision to change that. My plan going forward is to post here (at least) weekly, and I’ll start tackling the 2010 counterparts of what have been, historically, the most popular posts on this blog (based on the number of page views). I guess you could call it “SharePoint Blank’s Greatest Hits … for SharePoint 2010!”  If you’re burning for a 2010 version of a particular topic, however, all means, let me know, and I’ll happily bump it up in the rotation.

Anyway, let’s go ahead and get started with a 2010 update to the single most viewed post in the history of SharePoint Blank (with over 43K page views as of this writing): SharePoint Site Usage Reports: the Site Usage Summary.

In SharePoint 2010, what used to be known as “Site usage reports” have been renamed Web Analytics, and accessing them is a similar process, but they’re now accessible at several levels. From within a site, to access the Analytics for that site (which was the point of my original post), you’ll start selecting Site Settings from the Site Actions drop-down:

On the resulting Settings page, unlike in 2007 where you’d have found Site usage reports under the Site Administration heading, in 2010 you’ll find what you seek under the Site Actions heading in the form of two hyperlinks: Site Web Analytics reports and Site Collection Web Analytics reports:

Clicking the Site Web Analytics reports link will allow you to “View traffic of content inventory statistics for this site.”

Clicking the Site Collection Web Analytics reports link will allow you to “View traffic, search, or content inventory statistics for this site collection.”

I’d show you what those statistics look like but, alas, when I clicked them on our team site, I received the following message in lieu of metrics, glorious metrics:

“Web Analytics reports cannot be displayed because the Web Analytics Service Application is not provisioned. Contact the farm administrator to request that the Web Analytics Service Application be provisioned.”

So I’ll give you one guess as to whom I’m off to bother right now.  I’ll have to beg your pardon for the hasty exit, but you see, our Sys Admin could get the call that will initiate his paternity leave at any moment, so…

We are a full-service blog, and we do aim to please though, so for details and a peek at what the three types (Traffic, Search, and Inventory) of reports that are available look like, as well as the skinny on the two other areas they’re available for (Per Web application in the farm, and Per search service application), check out Ryan Duguid’s post, Introducing Web Analytics in SharePoint 2010 over at the Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog.

Wish me luck on that provisioning!