
Show HN: XLpup, usage tracking for excel workbooks - vulpesx2
https://xlpup.com
======
vulpesx2
Hey HN,

My name is Aadhi and I'm a long-time excel user. I started my journey with
excel when I was working at a F500 running daily / weekly reports for
management.

I found out pretty quickly that many of my reports weren't being read even
though it took hours out of my week to make them. Hence the inspiration for
XLpup ([https://xlpup.com](https://xlpup.com)).

XLpup tracks the usage / traffic your excel workbook gets via some VBA code
that pings a server whenever the workbook is opened. It currently only works
for Windows machines - but I do plan on including Mac support in the near
future as well.

I'm just getting started, so early users / feedback are greatly appreciated!

~~~
Hackbraten
How does your product ensure privacy?

In other words: how does your product make sure people aren’t going to abuse
it by distributing _unique_ copies of their workbooks so they can track the
exact times of individual recipients looking at them?

~~~
vulpesx2
Yeah - great point. I'm actually working on a way to detect if a set of IDs
are being used on the same workbook. This is possible technically via some
environment variables inherent to the spreadsheet - but it opens up another
can of worms on the privacy side of information I'd have to collect.

I think the short-term solution will be to throttle unique ID creation to 5 /
email - not perfect, but I'm a one-man team so will have to bite at this
problem step-wise :)

