Creating Graphical Reports in Exchange 2007

For those of you that ever wanted to utilise the raw data contained within the Exchange Server message logs, then here is an excerpt from an excellent article from msexchange.org explaining how to deploy a reporting solution using free Microsoft tools to create nice bar charts, data tables and even 3D pie charts!

We had a customer that had a particular need to present a report to internal management that contained the top 50 senders and receivers of email. Now this might sound like a simple enough report to generate from any anti spam or email monitoring device, but as we found out, the reports these devices can churn out, are mainly based around top spam users or top blocked users. This customer wanted a report that detailed everything - spam included!

This solution will work on Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 and also Exchange 2010 (DAG configuration not supported though).

This solution utilises the Microsoft Log Parser tool version 2.2 to query the log files and generate the reports that you need.

Once the Log Parser is installed and the additional Microsoft Office Addins (pre-requisites too), then it is all about old fashioned command line scripting (no advanced training needed though) to get the reports that you need.

We had to stray slightly from the steps within the document I've linked to but with a little perseverence, we managed to generate some pretty cool reports that the customer was delighted with considering it cost nothing to implement!

Here's the link to the full document on msexchange.org's website:

Part 1
http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/monitoring-operations/creating-graphical-reports-exchange-2007-part1.html


Part 2
http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/monitoring-operations/creating-graphical-reports-exchange-2007-part2.html


Part 3
http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/monitoring-operations/creating-graphical-reports-exchange-2007-part3.html



Happy scripting!