What is End-to-End Monitoring?

The reality is that about 80-90% of mobile apps launched in the app stores face uninstalls and poor adoption issues. This is why businesses are left wondering what it takes to make a mobile application a success. Well, the truth lies in detecting the mistakes that cause an application to be a failure amongst the users; one could be in the procedure of mobile app design its development, marketing, or testing.

Source

End to End Monitoring helps to ensure the entire functionality tracks the performance, thus allowing operations to act fast in case of any issue, even before the user observes anything malicious. However, setting up real end-to-end application monitoring could be intricate and overwhelming. Let’s understand more. 

What is End-User Monitoring?

End to end monitoring is one of the various forms of app/ web performance monitoring available. Also known as “end-user monitoring,” this methodology comprises monitoring end users as they interact with a mobile application. You can then use information gathered from monitoring those sessions to detect and fix app performance issues.

Importance of End-to-End Monitoring 

If you are seeking an End to End monitoring solution, you may come across APM (application performance management). 

• APM is about discovering glitches/ anomalies in the mobile app and its elements.
• Tracking the virtual machines, hardware, containers, or infrastructures such as the network, databases, or caches to find bottlenecks and bugs and proposing solutions is its key duty. 
• This method only covers system analysis from a technical standpoint – without communication and integration between all those services. 

Post-release mobile application monitoring has a massive impact on the overall success of the investment in the newly launched software solution. If this procedure is well thought-through, it:

• Reduces risks/ threats related to downtime, bugs, and other issues 
• Gives adherence to post-deployment budget plans
• Guarantees quality control
• Fosters data sharing within the team
• Gives insights into the efficiency and performance of the app
• Enhances visibility into how users use the app in real-time life conditions

Misconceptions and Myths in End-to-End Monitoring

There are multiple misconceptions when it comes to monitoring a particular app’s performance. Actually, it already begins with the terminology: people talk about app monitoring, app performance management, chain monitoring, or end-to-end (end-user) monitoring.

Fortunately, such terms all have one common aspect: it’s all about ‘monitoring’. With tons of hits on this topic on Google, it is time to explore the four biggest misconceptions/myths concerning end-to-end monitoring.

• “The application chain will work properly when monitoring all the Apps”

In numerous businesses, monitoring is performed at the application or technical level. This gives a great insight into the individual app’s performance. However, apps are increasingly interlinked and function together to support a single process. With monitoring at the app level, you, therefore, lack insight into the operation of the chain altogether. 

• “By outsourcing, means outsourcing the responsibility”

Progressively, enterprises are using operationally critical apps hosted by major Software as a Service (SaaS) parties in the cloud. But the fact that they are offered by giant players like Skype, Dropbox, Microsoft, and Salesforce doesn’t necessarily mean that the apps will perform satisfactorily. 

Despite that, countless companies believe that by collaborating with third-party they also pass on the responsibility for better performance. That isn’t true; the core responsibility for the IT service to be offered remains with their own IT department.

• “Measurement is knowledge” 

Most companies make some form of effort toward monitoring. Unfortunately, either little is done with the results of the measurements, or the key measurements still say nil about the app performance or app accessibility, or they don’t achieve the desired outcome.

• “The business case for end to end application monitoring is tough to make”

This is a difficult statement but commonly heard. It is true monitoring costs huge bucks. However, if you don’t have insight into the real performance of the complete chain, how can you know when errors exist or are on the way? When sales are deteriorating or when users are starting to complain? Or when business procedures are slowing down? Then it is too late! 

You must stay ahead of complaining users or staff and take action before losing them. Here lies the business case for the extra value of end-to-end application monitoring.

10 Best Practices for End-to-End Monitoring

By following these 10 best practices, companies can ensure that the monitoring process is successful and aids them in reaching their objectives:

1. Choose the right tool for your application monitoring
2. Develop a budget and timeline  
3. Establish clear objectives, goals, and indicators to estimate the success of the project or program. This will ensure that the monitoring process is effective and that any potential hitches can be detected and monitored.
4. Developing standardized data collection protocols and procedures to confirm accuracy is key when it comes to the monitoring and evaluation process.
5. Use the outputs to make informed decisions.
6. Analyzing outcomes and reporting findings. Additionally, it will enable progress monitoring so that any required modifications can be executed along the way.
7. Involve all shareholders in the procedure and communicate the results to all stakeholders;
8. Moreover, it is significant to monitor the evaluation procedure periodically to detect if the project is attaining its desired outcomes. This monitoring can be attained through reviews of progress that are conducted frequently.
9. It is vital to frequently review and update the monitoring process to ensure it is efficient and effective.
10. Don’t be scared to ask for help from your tool vendor. They are the specialists, after all. A good vendor will have extreme support obtainable to you.

It’s crucial that each step of the process is meticulously tracked and any issues or problems addressed decisively and swiftly. You can ensure its successful completion by paying close attention to how the project is systematically progressing and making necessary alterations.

Significant Tools for End-to-End Monitoring

• Dynatrace: This platform combines broad & deep observability and constant runtime app security with advanced AIOps to offer answers & smart automation from data. 
• Datadog: It is the monitoring, analytics, and security platform in the cloud-centric era. This SaaS platform integrates & automates application performance monitoring to give unified, real-time observability of our users’ complete technology stack.
• AppDynamics: powered by Cisco, helps businesses see their technology via the lens of the business so they can function as one to prioritize what matters most. 
• Microsoft System Center: aids users with out-of-the-box provisioning, monitoring, configuration, protection, automation, and self-service.

Tips for Debugging Your Application’s Performance 

There is no solo solution to this problem. Still, there are two essential approaches to consider to avoid late responses to the app’s performance issues.

1. Close(r) monitor on every single release
2. Feature performance testing before it gets released to the public.
3. Given the device fragmentation, maintaining an on-premise device farm is expensive. This is where BrowserStack helps you. 
4. BrowserStack offers an innovative way to debug browsers using real-time device cloud.
5. It allows interactive tests under real user conditions and can assist you in debugging on 3000+ devices & browsers.

To Sum Up

• The things you do to enhance the performance of the app is beneficial, and so app performance monitoring is paramount for their success. 
• End-user monitoring can assist organizations in identifying the key reasons why particular apps are slow. 
• The monitoring and evaluation also help highlight zones that require attention or any modification that need to be made to guarantee that the desired outcomes are met.
• Choosing the appropriate technologies, picking the right cloud testing grid, identifying the specific business-critical processes, configuring the proper threshold, etc., are only some of the jobs to consider. 

Manual monitoring isn’t feasible as it is time-consuming and expensive. For that reason, performance monitoring and automation go hand-in-hand. End-to-End monitoring uses headless browser automation tools like Puppeteer and Playwright to test your app/ website’s key user flows constantly. 

Monitoring can then be as simple as a two-step approach:     

• Focus on procedures: Detect the key business procedure you will use for monitoring.
• Automate those processes: Use a robust monitoring tool for automating all those business procedures from A to B.

Test automation lets you monitor your app 24/7, so when something is wrong, you automatically create a ticket at a service desk or even alert someone. Not only that, automation enables you to monitor performance in virtual hosts, physical servers, virtual applications, and machines.

Browserstack Automate allows you to execute your UI test suite in minutes with parallelization on 3000+ actual devices and browsers. Test on every commit without catching bugs early and slowing down releases.

Try Parallel Testing