How do I audit third party plugin usage?

[Gregory Muir]

I'm not seeing any native way to do this and am wondering if I might need to get a plugin to monitor my plugins! 

We are paying for several plugins and it's hard to see if the usage volume is justifying the expenditure. We were wanting to see how many pages are using it and a history of usage. There's a macro usage view built in that can tell me xyz macro was used a hundred times but it doesn't tell me if that was all last week or five years ago. 

Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There is no way to do this.

Apps can modify or add new functions to Confluence in all sorts of ways, and there's no generic way to work out how they are being used.  Some provide macros, some add functions, some change searching, some change users, some do admin, and so-on.

Some apps do some self-tracking, which you may be able to hook into, but there's no way to write something that can tell you "where an app has been used". 

Also, for macros, while we can get "where it has been used" and count it up, that "used" means "it exists on a page".  Macros (and some apps) run when someone reads a page.  A macro might have been put on a page 5 years ago, but if people are still reading it today, then does the macro doing its job when it runs today count as used?

You have to look at each app, evaluate what it does, and then work out how to detect that.