TimeTracker/docs/admin/monitoring/ANALYTICS_QUICK_START.md

Analytics Quick Start Guide

This guide will help you quickly enable and configure analytics features in TimeTracker.

🎯 Choose Your Setup

Option 1: No External Analytics (Default)

What you get:

• ✅ Local JSON logs (logs/app.jsonl)
• ✅ Prometheus metrics (/metrics endpoint)
• ✅ No data sent externally

Setup:

# No configuration needed - this is the default!
docker-compose up -d

---

Option 2: Self-Hosted Monitoring

What you get:

• ✅ Local JSON logs
• ✅ Prometheus metrics collection
• ✅ Grafana dashboards
• ✅ Everything stays on your infrastructure

Setup:

# Deploy with monitoring profile
docker-compose --profile monitoring up -d

# Access dashboards
# Grafana: http://localhost:3000 (admin/admin)
# Prometheus: http://localhost:9090

---

Option 3: Cloud Error Monitoring (Sentry)

What you get:

• ✅ Local JSON logs
• ✅ Prometheus metrics
• ✅ Automatic error reporting to Sentry
• ✅ Performance monitoring

Setup:

1. Create a free Sentry account: https://sentry.io
2. Create a new project and get your DSN
3. Add to .env:

SENTRY_DSN=https://your-key@sentry.io/your-project-id
SENTRY_TRACES_RATE=0.1  # 10% of requests for performance monitoring

4. Restart:

docker-compose restart

---

Option 4: Product Analytics (PostHog)

What you get:

• ✅ Local JSON logs
• ✅ Prometheus metrics
• ✅ User behavior analytics
• ✅ Feature usage tracking
• ✅ Session recordings (optional)

Setup:

1. Create a free PostHog account: https://app.posthog.com
2. Create a project and get your API key
3. Add to .env:

POSTHOG_API_KEY=your-api-key
POSTHOG_HOST=https://app.posthog.com

4. Restart:

docker-compose restart

Self-Hosted PostHog: You can also self-host PostHog: https://posthog.com/docs/self-host

---

Option 5: Everything (Self-Hosted)

What you get:

• ✅ All monitoring and logging
• ✅ Everything on your infrastructure
• ✅ Full control over your data

Setup:

# Deploy with all profiles
docker-compose --profile monitoring --profile logging up -d

# Access services
# Application: https://localhost (via nginx)
# Grafana: http://localhost:3000
# Prometheus: http://localhost:9090
# Loki: http://localhost:3100

---

Option 6: Full Cloud Stack

What you get:

• ✅ Cloud error monitoring (Sentry)
• ✅ Cloud product analytics (PostHog)
• ✅ Local logs and metrics

Setup: Add to .env:

# Sentry
SENTRY_DSN=your-sentry-dsn
SENTRY_TRACES_RATE=0.1

# PostHog
POSTHOG_API_KEY=your-posthog-key
POSTHOG_HOST=https://app.posthog.com

Restart:

docker-compose restart

---

🔧 Advanced Configuration

Enable Anonymous Telemetry

Help improve TimeTracker by sending anonymous usage statistics via PostHog:

# Add to .env
ENABLE_TELEMETRY=true
POSTHOG_API_KEY=your-posthog-api-key  # Required for telemetry
TELE_SALT=your-random-salt-string
APP_VERSION=1.0.0

What's sent:

• Anonymized installation fingerprint (SHA-256 hash)
• Application version
• Platform information (OS, Python version)

What's NOT sent:

• No usernames, emails, or any PII
• No project names or business data
• No IP addresses (not stored)

Note: Telemetry events are sent to PostHog using the same configuration as product analytics, keeping all your data in one place.

---

📊 Viewing Your Analytics

Local Logs

# View JSON logs
tail -f logs/app.jsonl

# Pretty print JSON logs
tail -f logs/app.jsonl | jq .

# Search for specific events
grep "timer.started" logs/app.jsonl | jq .

Prometheus Metrics

# View raw metrics
curl http://localhost:8000/metrics

# Query specific metric
curl 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=tt_requests_total'

Grafana Dashboards

1. Open http://localhost:3000
2. Login (admin/admin)
3. Create a new dashboard
4. Add panels with Prometheus queries

Example Queries:

# Request rate
rate(tt_requests_total[5m])

# P95 latency
histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(tt_request_latency_seconds_bucket[5m]))

# Error rate
rate(tt_requests_total{http_status=~"5.."}[5m])

---

🚨 Troubleshooting

Logs not appearing?

# Check log directory permissions
ls -la logs/

# Check container logs
docker-compose logs timetracker

# Verify JSON logging is enabled
grep "JSON logging initialized" logs/timetracker.log

Metrics endpoint not working?

# Test metrics endpoint
curl http://localhost:8000/metrics

# Should return Prometheus format text
# If 404, check app startup logs
docker-compose logs timetracker | grep metrics

Sentry not receiving errors?

# Check SENTRY_DSN is set
docker-compose exec timetracker env | grep SENTRY

# Check Sentry initialization
docker-compose logs timetracker | grep -i sentry

# Trigger a test error in Python console
docker-compose exec timetracker python
>>> from app import create_app
>>> app = create_app()
>>> # Should see "Sentry error monitoring initialized"

PostHog not tracking events?

# Check API key is set
docker-compose exec timetracker env | grep POSTHOG

# Check PostHog initialization
docker-compose logs timetracker | grep -i posthog

# Verify network connectivity
docker-compose exec timetracker curl -I https://app.posthog.com

---

🔒 Privacy & Compliance

For GDPR Compliance

1. Enable only the analytics you need
2. Document your data collection in your privacy policy
3. Provide users with opt-out mechanisms
4. Regularly review and delete old data

For Maximum Privacy

1. Use self-hosted analytics only (Option 2)
2. Disable telemetry (default)
3. Use short log retention periods
4. Encrypt logs at rest

For Complete Control

1. Self-host everything (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki)
2. Don't enable Sentry or PostHog
3. Don't enable telemetry
4. All data stays on your infrastructure

---

📚 Further Reading

• Complete Documentation: docs/analytics.md
• Event Schema: docs/events.md
• Privacy Policy: docs/privacy.md
• Implementation Summary: ANALYTICS_IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY.md

---

✅ Quick Validation

After setup, verify everything works:

# 1. Check metrics endpoint
curl http://localhost:8000/metrics

# 2. Check JSON logs are being written
ls -lh logs/app.jsonl

# 3. Trigger an event (login)
# Then check logs:
grep "auth.login" logs/app.jsonl | tail -1 | jq .

# 4. If using Grafana, check Prometheus datasource
# Open: http://localhost:3000/connections/datasources

# 5. View application logs
docker-compose logs -f timetracker

---

🎉 You're All Set!

Your analytics are now configured. TimeTracker will:

• 📝 Log all events in structured JSON format
• 📊 Expose metrics for Prometheus scraping
• 🔍 Send errors to Sentry (if enabled)
• 📈 Track product usage in PostHog (if enabled)
• 🔒 Respect user privacy at all times

Need help? Check the documentation or open an issue.

---

Last Updated: 2025-10-20
Version: 1.0