4. User Sessions

A User Session in RUM represents a single user’s complete interaction with your web application from the moment they arrive until they leave or become inactive. Each session captures a timeline of all page views, user interactions (clicks, scrolls, form submissions), network requests, errors, and performance metrics.

Sessions are identified by a unique Session ID and include metadata such as browser type, device, geographic location, and custom tags. This allows you to replay and analyze the exact experience a specific user had, making it invaluable for troubleshooting issues, understanding user behavior, and identifying performance bottlenecks.

Exercise
  • In the User Sessions table, click on the Session ID with the longest Duration (over 15 seconds or longer). This will take you to the RUM Session view.
  • Note the length of the span PlaceOrder, this is the time it took to complete the order. Not good!

RUM Session RUM Session

  • Look for the Fetch (1) which will be either above or below the PlaceOrder span.
    • It will look something like POST https://labob...y.com/cart/checkout.
  • Hover over the blue APM (2), after a few seconds a popup will appear.
  • You will see paymentservice and checkoutservice are in an error state as per the screenshot above.
  • Under Workflow Name click on front-end:/cart/checkout (3), this will bring up the APM Service Map. Here we will investigate the backend services and their dependencies to identify the root cause of the issue.

RUM Session RUM Session