Seeking advice with tracking open browser on client-side

[EricC]

I've (poorly) written a small PHP app that monitors the database our CRM app writes its "tickets" into and displays the number of "tickets" in our support staff's queue. The app performs a refresh every 5 seconds to give the illusion of being realtime. What I'm looking for is some way of monitoring who has this app open on their desktop and how long its been open. I'm really stuck on this one and will try most any ideas thrown at me.. 😃

[devinemke]

i assume that you have some sort of login/authorizatioin system already in place. if so start a [man]session[/man] when someone logs into the system (if you aren't doing that already) and store the logins/logouts somewhere (in a separate table perhaps). then you can simply poll the login table to see who is logged in and for how long.

[EricC]

Well I've considered that but ran into a few stumbling blocks: My little app is a popup called from the larger CRM package. If I use something like session_id in my app, the ID value doesn't change when they close the popup and re-open it, because the browser with the CRM package in it is still open. If I track based off of session_ids it'll appear that staff are opening my app and leaving it open all day (which they should be doing) even if they only open it once and close it immediate (which is what they're doing and why Management want to monitor who's not complying).

Thanks for the reply though, I'll continue to hammer my head on the keyboard until something useful comes out. 😃

[cmancone]

Here's a thought, no idea if it will work. There is a javascript function (which escapes me) that allows you to run a javascript when a page is closed. So, you can have a javascript function that reloads the main page when you close the popup window. Maybe you can work with that?

[konsu]

try to regenerate session every time the popup is opened.