Focus Exporter

Introduction

Focus Exporter is a Prometheus Exporter for Windows, designed to collect and monitor metrics about your time spent on Windows.

Inspired by Windows-Exporter, Focus Exporter uses a combination of Windows API calls to collect and expose metrics about active windows, user inactivity, and focused window durations.

By default, exposes a prometheus metrics endpoint at http://localhost:9183/metrics

Motivation

Microsoft Viva Insights offers great metrics, but they are part of a broader suite of services through office 365. Focus Exporter is my effort to collect a subset of these metrics independently. This project is my first project in Golang, any feedback is very appreciated.

Features

• Collects metrics about focused windows and user inactivity.
• Attempts to track time spent in meetings for applications like Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
• Exposes metrics through a Prometheus endpoint.
• Configurable through command-line parameters.
• privacy mode to avoid exposing sensitive window titles.

Metrics

Focus Exporter exposes the following metrics:

Metric Name	Description	Labels	Type
focused_window_pid	Process ID of the currently focused window	hostname, username, window_title, process_name	Gauge
focus_inactivity_seconds_total	Total seconds of user inactivity	hostname, username	Counter
focused_window_changes_total	Total number of times the focused window has changed	hostname, username	Counter
focused_window_duration_seconds	Duration in seconds the window has been focused	hostname, username, process_name	Counter
meeting_duration_seconds	Duration in seconds spent in a meeting	hostname, username, meeting_subject	Counter
go_*	Standard suite of Go application metrics	Various	Various

Usage

Serves an endpoint at http://$host:$port/metrics that must be scraped by a Prometheus metrics server. Data can be visualized in a program such as Grafana. Example dashboards coming soon.

This does not need to be ran as a Priviledged user.

A scheduled task can be used to run this service at logon.

Command-line Parameters

• -inactivityThreshold: The threshold in seconds for detecting user inactivity (default: 60 seconds).
• -interface: The network interface to listen on (default: all interfaces).
• -port: The port to listen on (default: 9183).
• -private: When true, the window title will be replaced with the process name for increased privacy.
• -debug: When true, output all values to the console.

Example Commands:

Default

>./focus-exporter This will start a server at http://localhost:9183/metrics and expose all metrics.

Custom Inactivity Threshold

>./focus-exporter -inactivityThreshold 120 This will start a server at http://localhost:9183/metrics with an inactivity threshold of 2 minutes.

Specify Network Interface and Port

>./focus-exporter -interface 192.168.1.1 -port 9090 This will start a server at http://localhost:9000/metrics and expose all metrics.

Privacy Mode

>./focus-exporter -private This will start a server at http://localhost:9183/metrics and will not expose the full Window_Title in metric labels.

Debug Mode

>./focus-exporter -debug This will start a server with debugging, which prints collected values to the console.

Installation

1. Clone the repository: >git clone https://github.com/yourusername/focus-exporter.git

2. Navigate to the project directory: >cd focus-exporter

3. Build the project: >go build -ldflags -H=windowsgui exporter.go

4. Run the exporter: >./exporter.exe

   (with optional flags):

   >./exporter.exe -debug -interface <ip or hostname> -port <port> --inactivityThreshold -private

Acknowledgments

This project wouldn't have been possible without the help of several AI tools and open-source libraries:

• GitHub Copilot
• Google AI Studio
• ChatGPT

Libraries Used

• Prometheus Client Golang: For metrics collection and exposition.
• golang/sys/windows: For Windows system calls and API interactions.

Special thanks to the authors of these libraries and the broader open-source community.