Front end clues to back end issues
Follow the breadcrumbs
In a user session with the order confirmation error message, click in the top right of the replay. You should land on the long PlaceOrder custom event in the RUM user session details.
- What is a likely cause of the Order Confirmation issue? How can you tell?
- If you wanted to investigate this issue further, what would you do?
- The nearby POST request to the backend API is quite long, and throws a 500 error.
- Because we’ve instrumented this app with both RUM and APM, we get related content between relevant requests. Hovering over the APM link on the long POST request, we see a likely root cause issue flagged on the payment service. So from here we could open the business operation in APM to see how widespread this issue is, and we can open the specific trace to see span details and any related logs.
Walkthrough:
- Hover over the
APMlink on the long POST request. After a moment, the popup shows related backend services and which are in an error state. - (Optional) Open the
Business Operationlink in a new tab to view the APM Service Map and see how checkout connects to downstream services (for example, payment service). - (Optional) Open the Trace ID link in a new tab to see this specific trace, its spans, tag details, and any relevant logs.
RUM + APM
Tracing from the browser through backend services cuts time spent chasing the wrong service and lowers MTTx.