Improving end user experience

FAQ's

• Can we find the number of hits or connections at any given point?Yes, this can be monitored in the IIS server. You can read more about it here:33É44https://www.manageengine.com/products/applications_manager/iis-monitoring.html Additionally, with the APM Insight feature, you can find which hit or connection from which user is taking more time to respond. You can read about the APM Insight feature here: https://www.manageengine.com/products/applications_manager/webtransaction-monitoring.html
• There seems to be a proxy error even when the URL is configured in the managed server. What could be the reason for this?The URL monitor will require an internet connection if the URL is not an internet site. You can configure proxy for connecting to the internet in the respective Managed server. Proxy server details can be configured in33É44Admin tab > Connectivity page in the Managed server.
• Does the URL monitor include all the metrics for all dependencies in the HTML page?The Website Content Monitor can help achieve this in depth. The URL monitor can help check the response of a webpage and its page size.
  What if the URL requires authentication?There is an option to provide credentials when adding the URL monitor in Applications Manager which will be used for autheticating into the webpage.
• What is the Admin server different from the Managed server?The admin and Managed server are ideal for the Enterprise edition of Applications Manager. The Admin server is the central console where you can manage your exisitng monitors, view reports and receive alerts. However, the managed server is the node where the actual monitoring and the data collection occurs. You will be able top add a monitor through the Admin server but then it will be synced with the Managed server which will actually perform the polling/ data collection.
• Is the Enterprise architecture designed to scale?Yes, that is ideally its purpose i.e. to support as much as 10,000 monitors in one instance. Moreover, it also serves to monitor different networks and geographically disconnected datacenters or branch offices, besides offering failover support for your monitoring setup.
• Where do I see the Monitor Groups from?From the Monitor tab, select the 'Monitor Group View' option from the 'Select View' tab.
• Is the waterfall graph only a part of RBM? Also, how does the licensing work?Yes, it is only a part of RBM. End user monitoring (which includes RBM) is available as an add-on to Applications Manager. Once the add-on is purchased and enabled, you should be able to use all the features. The add-on license is based on the set of sequences that are configured as monitors. You can add anywhere from 1 to33É44n33É44number of steps for every single monitor.
• How do I know which port number to use when setting up the recorder?In order to know the port number to use while setting up the recorder, check33É44AppManager/conf/AMServer.properties file in APM installation folder and check the33É44am.webserver.port value and use this in the recorder.
• Can we see the response time for a single page?Yes. If you want to monitor just one single page, you can use the HTTP URL monitor. This link should give you more details about it. http://help.appmanager.com/http-url-monitors
• Is the Real Browser Monitor plug-in available only with Firefox?Yes. As of now, it is available only with Firefox but we will be including other browsers in the near future.
• There are certain limitation while using Selenium plugin to interact with some web components like calendar. Will these same limitation arise while using Selenium test cases in the Real Browser Monitor? Unfortunately, yes. This plugin will exhibit similar limitations.
• Are there plans to update the URL sequence recorder from the existing IE browser? Yes, it is in our roadmap. We are looking at options to upgrade the same to latest version of IE while also looking for other alternatives.
• Does the URL sequence monitor involve one license per URL in the sequence or the entire sequence is considered as one monitor?An entire URL sequence is considered as one monitor in Applications Manager. Individual URLs in the sequence are not considered as monitors and will be excluded from the monitor count in the license.
  However, in the URL monitor, every single URL is considered as one monitor.
• Will the URL Sequence monitor also show you what the application calls in the backend?URL sequence monitor will not show the application calls in the backend. However, this can be achieved with the help of the APM Insight module of Applications Manager. We will be seeing that module in detail in the upcoming session. Refer this for details: http://help.appmanager.com/webtransaction-monitoring
• How can I monitor a Siebel application with RBM if Siebel does not support Firefox?
  What if it is validated only with IE?You can monitor it using the HTTP URL Sequence monitor or better yet, you can monitor it directly with the help of Applications Manager's Siebel monitor designed for this purpose.
  You can find more information here: http://help.appmanager.com/http-url-monitors$url-sequence
  
• The HTTP URL Sequence monitor runs in the Applications Manager server, so is it not possible to monitor the Siebel monitor from the end user?As of now, the only alternative is if you are using the Enterprise Edition, you can install a managed server in the client side address this scenario. However, we do have plans to have IE based RBM in the roadmap.
• Is there a way to receive an automatic Email when the health or availability becomes critical?You will have to configure actions to be executed when health or availability is critical. You can use the alarm templates to configure in bulk for all required monitors as well. Refer this page for more information regarding the same: http://help.appmanager.com/bulk-alarms-configuration
• Is the URL Sequence monitor a one time monitor, or does it have to be set up in order to run on a schedule?You need to manually record it once and save it into Applications Manager. Once it is saved, Applications Manager will schedule data collection automatically.
• Can we create a dashboard for multiple monitors? Yes. There are widgets in Applications Manager dashboard that you can use for this purpose.
• Do we have the option to monitor website containing captcha based login in URL Sequence monitor ? Unfortunately, this can't be done. The purpose of adding a captcha is to avoid automated play backs. In these scenarios, we recommend people to have a special user account which does not require captcha.
• If applications manager is agentless, why is there a need for EUM agent installation? How is this said agent different from managed server of applications manager? Imagine if you were to monitor the performance of your applications and services from various locations say, different branch offices. In such cases, rather than installing an entire Managed Server each time, you can choose the EUM alternative which is more lightweight and stateless. Since all these agents send the monitored data back to the same APM monitor instance, we can view the consolidated information across locations in one report. This is currently not possible with a managed server. The agent supports additional monitoring capabilities that are not present in the APM instance. Besides, it could be useful for monitoring services placed within a firewall and serve as a workaround for Intranet-Internet access issues.
• What about installing the EUM/RBM outside of a secure domain, for e.g. a home banking website? You can install EUM / RBM agents anywhere as long as bidirectional connectivity between APM and these agent is available.
• Does RBM run in the background or will it run as a visual on the machine? This depends on the OS. For Windows, the EUM agent (which is where the RBM playback occurs) is installed as service by default. In such cases, the playback occurs as a background process and will not been shown in the GUI. To view the browser-based playback, we have to disable the service and launch the agent in the non-service mode. For Linux, it will shown in the GUI by default. If the EUM agent is present in a Linux machine or run in the non-service mode, we recommend running the agent in a machine or environment that doesn't require any user interaction since any changes to the Firefox browser that is launched during playback will affect the playback.
• How can we see the file size affecting the slow response time of a web server? Real Browser Monitoring includes a waterfall graph which gives information regarding the time taken to retrieve the various files, such as images, scripts, HTML docs, etc, that form a webpage. If a particular file is large and affects the performance, this will be shown in the waterfall graph. For more details, refer http://help.appmanager.com/real-browser-monitor-rbm.
• How do we know the top SQL script that is using a DB instance? From APM insight you can find the SQL script times. Refer http://help.appmanager.com/web-transaction-monitoringFor this you need to deploy agent in your application.
• In a server where several applications have been hosted, when we realize that the server utilization is growing drastically larger, how do we detect the application that is over utilizing the server resource? Monitor each application individually (either using Java runtime or dot net application monitor or APM Insight monitor) and place them in a dashboard to get a consolidated view of the resource consumption of the respective apps.
• Which is the best method/recorder to monitor a sequence of pages that begins with a user login to their account on our website and ability to click links that include their personal account information? P.S. Those pages are not available without authentication to their account. The HTTP(s) URL Sequence monitoring and Real Browser Monitoring should meet this requirement. Record a transaction where you login, perform the required operations and log out of the application and create a monitor for the same. The playback will happen periodically upon monitor creation.
• Can we monitor SSL Certificate Expiry as well? Yes, we can monitor SSL certificate expiry. Please refer http://help.appmanager.com/web-server-/-services$sslcertificatemonitoring for details.
• Is it possible to monitor Citrix Storefront / Netscaler license expiry? If it is accessible over 'https://' like a website, you should be able to monitor it.
• Can content check in defacement monitor contain multiple value? Yes. Content Check can contain multiple comma separated values.
• Yes. Content Check can contain multiple comma separated values. If you are using RBM, it can record ajax calls but applets wont work.
• How does the licensing goes for this EUM monitoring? EUM is an Add-on. Once the add-on is purchased, you can have as many EUM Agents as you want. Each monitor added to a particular EUM Agent, will be counted as a monitor in APM. So, you will only be limited by your total monitor count.
• How do you trace a URL monitor in your application logs? For e.g. if I want to identify the URL monitor polls in my application (apache) logs, how do I achieve that? For the given URL monitor, you can set the User-Agent String in the configuration page. If the website does not restrict access based on the browser type, you can provide a unique value for this UA String and using the unique value and the IP Address of the machine where APM is installed, the you can trace the URLs, accessed by Applications Manager, in your Application's access log.