by
Scott Glew
Fastvue’s Internet Usage reports have always included a YouTube Videos section that displays the URLs of YouTube videos watched by people in your organization. Fastvue’s new YouTube integration makes reporting on YouTube videos even easier easy by enriching video URLs with the title, category and channel information, enabling you to easily see whether the videos are appropriate for your school or workplace.
Here’s a video that takes you through the new YouTube video reporting features in Fastvue Reporter.
Before you start, there are a couple of important notes:
The next step is to configure Fastvue’s YouTube integration. This requires obtaining a Google API key, and entering it into Fastvue Reporter’s YouTube Settings page.
With YouTube Integration configured, Fastvue Reporter will look up the video information as new YouTube video URLs are logged by your firewall and imported into Fastvue Reporter.
It’s important to note that YouTube video URLs already imported will not be enriched with the extra YouTube information. These are displayed as the original video URL.
Video reference: 4:13 – Configuring YouTube integration
Once some videos have been watched, logged by a firewall (remembering Deep Packet Inspection is required for this part) and imported into Fastvue Reporter, run an Internet Usage report:
Video Reference: 0:12 – The YouTube Videos widget in Internet Usage reports
If you see a YouTube video that is not something people should be watching in your organization, you can hover over the title of the video, then over the green arrow and run an Activity Report.
Activity Reports show all the user sessions including when each user started and stopped watching a video. This lets you see not only the people that watched the video and for how long, but also the users that may have clicked the link to the video, but did not hang around and watch it.
The green bars give you a visual indication of when each person started and stopped watching the video.
Video Reference: 1:11 – Viewing everyone that watched a specific video, and for how long.
At the time of writing, videos on YouTube can be classified as one of the following fifteen categories:
You can filter your reports by any of these categories using the new Media Category field (see below), or by simply hovering over the desired category in the YouTube Videos widget, then over the green arrow, and selecting Internet Usage.
This runs another Internet Usage report filtered by the category you hovered over. You can then go to the YouTube Videos section again to view the list of videos.
Video reference: 0:52 – Reporting on the Entertainment YouTube category
If you also need to see the start and end times for each video, simply select Activity Report (instead of Internet Usage) when hovering over the green arrow, and the resulting report will show the video title, channel and user along with start and end times.
There is a range of new fields that hold the YouTube video information:
You can filter any Fastvue reports by these Media fields.
Video reference: 1:43 – Filtering reports by ‘Media’ fields
For example, to find the users that watched videos from a specific channel, filter an Internet Usage report or an Activity Report by the Media Channel field. Or find the firewall policy responsible for allowing access to a specific video category by filtering an IT Network and Security report by the Media Category field.
Video reference: 2:05 – Reporting on unproductive Media Categories
You can also use the ‘Contains’ filter operator to find video titles with specific keywords:
Video reference: 2:56 – Reporting on YouTube video titles that contain specific keywords
Just as you can filter reports by Media fields, you can also use Media fields in Alert criteria.
You’ll then start to receive emails that look like this:
YouTube is a fantastic resource for schools and businesses to utilise, but many organizations simply block access to YouTube due to its many distractions. Fastvue Reporter’s YouTube integration allows your organization to be more permitting when it comes to YouTube access, as you now have the visibility into the types of videos people are watching and can address issues if and when they arise on a case by case basis.
Make sure you are running the latest version of Fastvue Reporter to access this feature. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Fastvue Reporter, you need to wait until a new database index is created tomorrow for the YouTube functionality to work.
And again, make sure you enable deep packet inspection on your firewall so that video URLs containing the video ID get logged.
If you have any issues or questions, simply reach out to [email protected] and we’ll happily help you out!
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