It’s amazing how much support labor is expended trying to find out what browser (and on what platform) a user is using.

Not to throw IE under the bus, but if the user is using IE6, that’s something the support team will want to know (and soon). Unfortunately, it is also something that doesn’t always surface immediately.

We do see users who, when encountering launch problems, do a little dance. First they try their phone, then their iPad, then their wife’s Android device, then that dusty old laptop in the corner with the annoying fan.

Then comes the report, “it worked once … I think on my wife’s phone”.

What we’ve discovered is that it’s better if the support team “just knows” the user’s user agent without having to ask. Even when they ask, the answer they get might be incorrect.

As such, with a nod of the hat to everyone who does the dirty work of coaching people on how to clear their browser cache, we are happy to add easy to use user agent tracking to bright.

This information is available straight from the Bright API. To use it, you’ll need to know your Bright realm guid and realm secret key. Don’t know yours? Ask us. You also need to know your Bright URL, it looks something like:

https://[bright server]/bright/api/v2

Now you might want to know your learner’s email address. For this example, will use rstallman@prep.ai.mit.edu.

https://[bright server]/bright/api/v2/launch_history.json?realm_guid=[realm-guid]&realm_secret_key=[realm-secret-key]&learner_id=rstallman@prep.ai.mit.edu

You can actually type that into your browser and get this user’s launch history out. Since you are using your secret key, don’t do this on an insecure computer and don’t do it over HTTP (use HTTPS).

Now what you’ll get out is fairly nice ….

Now what you really want is the JSON Formatter for Chrome 😉

If XML is more your speed, try a URL like this:

https://[bright server]/bright/api/v2/launch_history.xml?realm_guid=[realm-guid]&realm_secret_key=[realm-secret-key]&learner_id=rstallman@prep.ai.mit.edu