Foglight APM for Real User Experience 5.9.9

Page visited before starting session—this information can be useful for picking the correct session out of a list of session search results. You can look at the Initial Referer column to find the page the user visited before beginning the session.

The following workflow assumes that you have the session identifier or user name. If you do not, you need to define an expert search and create match conditions using one or more of the other details as your search criteria. For instructions, see Defining expert searches for sessions.

To find the user session:

Gather information about the user’s session.

Log into Foglight.

In the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click APM > Search > Sessions.

Click Simple Search.

Specify the time period during which the user experienced issues. From the first list, select the state of the session (started, in progress, or ended) during the time period. From the second list, select the time period.


	TIP: If no other options are set, the search returns all sessions of the selected state that occurred within the specified time period.

Optional—specify whether the session is currently active or complete.

Specify either the session identifier or the user name, whichever you have.

Click Search.

The Search Sessions results table displays the search results.

If you have only one match, you can begin investigating the session now. Otherwise, you need to pick out the user’s session from the results list. If you know the session start time, end time, or the page that the user was looking at before beginning the session, you should be able to select the correct session by looking to those columns in the Search Sessions results table.

Investigating issues

You use the Session Explorer to investigate issues. The Session Explorer contains:

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Complete hit details for the entire HTTP request and response for any hit in the session

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A visual presentation of each page as originally served by the web server

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A visual presentation of each page with user input (forms/links)

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The original HTML source for each page generated by the web server

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Any errors (HTML or other source) detected by analyzers

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Session and sequence durations, hit counts, and other aggregate details


	NOTE: This workflow starts from the Search Session results table. However, the process is similar when you drill down from a Real User tile in the Transaction dashboard or when you run a search for hits or sequences.

This workflow presents one way to investigate issues. Your investigation should be guided by the type of problem you are investigating. For example, you may want to skip the session replay and go straight to the hit inspector.

To investigate an issue:

In the row containing the issue you want to investigate, click Session Explorer

The Session Explorer opens. When opened from the Search Hits results table, the hit displayed is the selected hit. When opened from the Search Sequences or Search Sessions results table, the hit details represent the first hit in the selected sequence or session.

If not already selected, click the Replay tab.

The content associated with the selected hit is displayed. Look for navigation clues in the Referer/Navigated To sections above the page content. The Details sections may provide additional information. You can switch between Captured Hits (to see all hits) and Page Visit Order (HTML pages). Select different hits in the user’s path to view the content they saw.


	IMPORTANT: Some content may not be shown in the response replay. For more information on missing content and using the features in the Replay tab, see Replaying sessions, hits, and sequences.

Figure 31. Session Explorer dashboard

To investigate a page further, click the Hit Inspector tab.

In the list of hits in the session table, look for hits that exhibit symptoms of the problem, such as a hit that displays one or more of the following characteristics:

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Status—look for icons other than the Normal icon. A hit can be set to a non-normal status due to a client or browser error code or when the hit matched some set of conditions defined within a hit analyzer. APM Administrators define and manage hit analyzers.

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Code—look for client error codes (400+) or server error codes (500+). Remember though that Web 2.0 applications may not return error codes, because they redirect users to a helpful error page rather than a generic error page. In this case, you need to rely on analyzers catching the errors and setting the hit status to non-normal.

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End-to-End Time—very high end-to-end times may indicate a problem with the amount of content on a page or a very slow web server.

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Back End Time—very high back end times may indicate a problem with the web server.

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Exception—any exceptions should be reported to the application developer.

After you identify the hits that contribute to the problem, select each hit in turn and scan the hit details to look for clues about what might be causing the performance issues. Additional details and metrics are available by clicking Metric Updates, Client Details, or Other Information.

Figure 32. Session Explorer Hit Inspector

For example, if the hit status is non-normal but the error code is 200, you can review the hit’s details to find out which hit analyzers were triggered. You can pass this information on to an APM Administrator for further investigation and resolution. If the back end time is high, you may want to check the health of the web sites and endpoints in your monitored environment, especially if you are having many users reporting similar issues.

If you suspect that poor performance is localized to a city, region, or country, you can create a map using the search results. In the search results, click Map

. For more information, see Viewing search results in a map.

If many real users are reporting the same issue, it may be helpful to create a pivot chart that aggregates data for all users. Return to the search results. Click Pivot

. For more information, see Viewing search results in pivot charts.

Searching and investigating sequences

If your APM Administrator configured sequence analyzers, you can search for sequences created by a selected analyzer. You can also specify a time range, sequence state (active or completed), session identifier, sequence status (OK, warning, error), or some combination of these search parameters. You can define match conditions to create very specific searches.


	NOTE: If you want a high-level, graphical view of aggregated sequence data, start from the Sequence Explorer dashboard. From there, you can navigate to the Search Sequences dashboard described in this section. For more information, see Assessing real user experiences during key sequences.

In the Search Sequences dashboard, you can run a simple search or an expert search to find sequences. You can also rerun the last search, save a search, load and run a saved search, or clear search results.

For more information, see the following topics:

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Defining simple searches for sequences

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Defining expert searches for sequences

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Understanding search sequences results

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Investigating sequence results

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Replaying sessions, hits, and sequences