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Tilde operator seems to now work in Application User action analysis?

AntonioSousa
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

In applications, in User action analysis, when we filter by "User action name", it gives us a list of possible user-actions. But we can fill it by name, and it creates a tilde operator like seen below. The problem is that it doesn't work like in other parts of the Platform UI, and gives no results at all.

This would be great to join several user-actions in the analysis. Is it not possible?



Antonio Sousa
5 REPLIES 5

zietho
Dynatrace Leader
Dynatrace Leader

Dear Antonio,

While it looks like you can filter all user actions by only parts of the name. please compare illustration 1 and 2, it's actually not the case. User action name only filters for exact names (i.e., matches).

For example, when I filtered for "change", where multiple user action names with "change" in its name exist, when hitting enter, the result will be empty! Thus, the tilde does not mean you can "group" user actions by parts of their names.

To group user actions you currently can use "user action properties" as kind of tags and use the user action properties filter, which in fact works as a contains filter, to group user actions.

To make this more concrete, let's look at an example where you have a user action property that stores the journey names of all bookings of our easytravel travel platform. By using the name and entering Paris I now only see user actions with Paris in its journey name.

Thanks @Thomas Z. for your thorough explanation.

I believe if the tilde doesn't do anything, it shouldn't be there. It does work in several other parts of the platform. Why wouldn't it work here? I suppose it would be a hard limitation?

I understand the user action properties, but unfortunately it seems that you can't derive them from the URL. Eventually you could define a request attribute server side and capture the URL I believe, but that would definitely be an elegant solution.

I believe that being able to group user-actions in Applications in a more straightforward way, like this tilde approach, would be particularly important. But would like your opinion first, before I submit an RFE.

Antonio Sousa

Hey,

Tilde - Yes I already forwarded this to the development team and we gonna discuss it! Personally, I agree that it should not be there in that case and that it's misleading!.

Regarding action properties. You can use the URL or also often very popular the referrer into an action property. To get the current URL you could simply use a JavaScript variable as source and use "window.location". Or what do you exactly mean by "derive"?

Regarding the last sentence. In general yes. Maybe let's go one step backward and let me ask you an additional (but now that I think about it probably more important question). Where do you want to use the grouping? Is it a calculated metric you want to base it on? Or is it simply for the sake of looking at all actions in that list?

  • The former - due to techn. limitation - will only be available over the properties workaround and such a product idea already existed and I closed it with that workaround.
  • To just "search" and look for actions with a contains filter in that list then use the filter bar and change the appearing drop down to "in all user actions" (see screenshot).
  • To check user actions based on pages? Then you will like something we release in early Q1, where we add "page views" to Dynatrace, automatically grouping your user actions per page! And yes they then will also be available as filters and to create calculated metrics!

To conclude. Unless there is any other reason why you want to group user actions other than the first two mentioned in my list, then I have to say please don't create an RFE, since you would receive the same answer and I'd have to set it to "not planned".

kind regards

Thomas

PS: yes all the screenshot contain tabs for displaying user actions and key user actions, which is a little papercut we release with 1.205 :). So don't be surprised if you don't find the tabs yet on your system ;).

Hi @Thomas Z.,

Thanks again for such a detailed answer.

When I refer to derive, I mean grouping certain user actions from the URL perspective. Imagine for instance a bank that has a distinction between personal and enterprise accounts:

where nnnn and mmmm are different pages. So the idea is like to get data in Applications for all personal or enterprise clients. The tilde operator would be perfect for this. No other feature seems to give such basic functionality.

Not sure if the last option you refer to, available for Q1, will help here. But one simple thing I would like to do is get an Apdex graph for all www.bankexample.com/personal/* and I can't. I can have a sneak peek of the values in USQL, but cannot get the same in Applications, and the data that comes along there.

Antonio Sousa

Awesome! That's exactly what page views will be for ;)! One more reason to provide them! Ok I now believe I understand your problem. And yes we gonna provide an Apdex per view! With 1.205 you in general will be able to create calculated metrics based on Apdex. With the aforementioned page views, you can then create a calc metric for only particular views and as a result, dashboard them and alert on it.

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