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Now let's move on to reporting.

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Generating historical user activity reports is

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commonplace in many organizations, and unfortunately,

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it's not enabled by default when you install the RRAS role on

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Windows server so administrators must perform some additional

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tasks to enable this feature.

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When the Routing and Remote Access Service is installed,

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there is an option to enable what's called accounting,

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and in particular, we're interested in configuring inbox accounting,

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which is preferable over RADIUS accounting.

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Enabling inbox accounting allows for the long‑term storage of user activity

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data for which administrators can define retention periods,

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and ultimately,

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generate reports for any user activity that occurred during that timeframe.

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The information available in these reports is the same

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information you saw in a previous lesson when we were

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looking at current user activity.

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When inbox accounting is enabled and configured,

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a Windows internal database is installed and user

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activity is logged to that database.

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Reports are generated from information stored in that database as well.

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This database is essentially a SQL database,

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and as such, requires some periodic maintenance to maintain optimal performance.

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To support this,

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I've developed a PowerShell module that includes a variety of tools

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that administrators will find helpful in this regard.

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Using my PowerShell module,

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administrators can back up and restore the inbox accounting database,

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they can compress the database to recover disk space,

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and optionally,

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relocate the database from the default location of

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the C drive to a different disk, if required.

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A word of caution though,

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moving the inbox accounting database from its default

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location is not formally supported by Microsoft,

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so please exercise caution when you're using this option, and of course, use this technique at your own risk.