Inspiration

This extension is part of a larger project I'm building (called 1Admin) to help small businesses manage the finance and security aspects of cloud software and infrastructure. Having spoken to IT leaders about this problem, it became clear that an extension to help track real-time usage of company licenses is one of the key components to getting a holistic picture of who is using what.

What it does

This Chrome extension sits quietly, looking for sign-in forms or cookies relating to sessions with common web applications (e.g., Slack, Discord, etc). It will then periodically ping these login events to an external server for storage (on MongoDB) and reporting.

How we built it

This was written with the Typescript MERN stack.

Challenges we ran into

Chrome extension building doesn't have the best documentation/SO outside of the basics around getting set up. Finding a good set of indicators for logging in that works across many websites was also a challenge.

What's next for SaaS tracker

Leveraging this great data source to enhance SaaS usage visibility for both the business and individuals (e.g., knowing you haven't used Netflix in 3 months could be helpful when it comes to cutting down on subscriptions).

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