2023.3 Release Notes

New features and enhancements that are available in Germain UX 2023.3 release as of 7/31/23.

MONITORING AND ANALYTICS FEATURES

15-Second Backward/Forward Buttons for User Session Replay

Customers: Healthcare

Description

This enhancement entails the incorporation of 15-second (configurable) backward and forward navigation buttons within the User Session Replay feature. These buttons will enable users to easily navigate the replayed session content.

Accessing Field Display Settings from Drill-Through Dashboards

Customers: Healthcare

Description

This feature enhancement aims to provide users with the capability to access the Display Settings of a field directly from within the Drill-Through Dashboard interface. This improvement will streamline the process of managing field display preferences.

Apache ZooKeeper Monitoring

Customers: Allan Gray, American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

Germain comes with preconfigured monitoring for Apache ZooKeeper performance. For details on the advantages and instructions on how to enable this feature, please refer to: Apache Zookeeper Monitoring

Data Point Count, Percent, and Sorting for Filters

Customers: eBay

Description

The Data Point Count and Percent features are now accessible for any value or key performance indicator (KPI) listed within the Filter. This enhanced functionality is applicable across all Aggregate, Pivot, Drill-through, and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) dashboards.

Data Point Count for 'Add Metric' and 'Explore Your Data'

Customers: Allan Gray, American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

The Data Point Count feature is now available for any key performance indicator (KPI) listed within the 'Add Metric' and 'Explore Your Data' input fields. This enhancement further enriches your data analysis experience.

Dashboard-Level 'Compare To' Functionality

Customers: General Electric

Description

The 'Compare To' feature has been relocated to the Aggregate Dashboard level, eliminating the need for manual interaction by clicking on 'Compare To' for individual portlets. This enhancement streamlines the process and improves user experience.

Displaying All Workflows in Table Portlet

Customers: Healthcare

Description

This feature enhancement enables the Table Portlet to showcase the performance of all monitored Workflows or Business Processes within a single view.

Several other Portlets (Table, N-Table, Funnel, Geo Map, Trend Graph, etc.) can be utilized for analyzing Workflow performance.

EC2/EBS Burst Balance Monitoring

Customers: General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

Germain now comes preconfigured with the ability to monitor the EBS Burst Balance of EC2 instances. In the event that any of these instances approach depletion of IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), alerts will be generated to ensure timely response and management.

Example

Configure

Within the rule that manages the output from the aforementioned command, we execute an additional command to retrieve the precise metric value. In this scenario, the component operates on an hourly basis, with the period and start/end times adjusted accordingly.

Another rule captures the output of the burst metric for each instance and stores it as a metric within Germain Datastore:

Editable Operational Dashboard for a Perfect 360° View

Customers: eBay

Description

This feature enables the customization of the Operational Dashboard. Users can easily add or remove columns across all tabs for a personalized experience and a 360 degree view that fits their Organization and Operational needs.

More details on the Operational Dashboard.

Formatting Enhanced for Comprehensive Insights

Customers: American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, Healthcare

Description

Within the Germain UX workspace, several areas required refining in terms of formatting and string presentation. This refinement is aimed at facilitating swifter problem analysis. The following are examples of locations where string formatting has been improved to enhance readability:

Http Request Body

Filter

Flow Graph Display for Comprehensive Customer Journey

Customers: General Electric

Description

This enhancement involves the implementation of a capability to visualize the entire customer journey, spanning across multiple applications and channels, within a single Flow Graph. The provided screenshot serves as a mockup to illustrate the concept.

Several other Portlets (Table, N-Table, Funnel, Geo Map, Trend Graph, etc.) can be utilized for analyzing the Customer Journey.

Links to understand relationship between Configuration Objects

Customers: N/A

Description

This enhancement helps understand the relationship between configuration objects (Kpi, Sla, Alert, Synthetic Transaction, etc). You can now find links on any of the Configuration Dashboards (in Analytics, Automation, Systems folders).

Links to understand relationship between Data and Configuration objects

Customers: N/A

Description

This enhancement helps in understanding how a data point was collected. In the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) dashboard, there is now an info icon that provides links to the KPI of the data points, the Component/Engine/Agent responsible for collecting the data, and the Data Source for which the data was collected.

Measures Management for Summary Portlet (Drill-Through Dashboard)

Customers: General Electric

Description

This enhancement enables the capability to add or remove measures within the Summary portlet of any Drill-Through dashboard. For instance, measures like Count, Duration, Total Duration, Percentile 99 Duration, and more can be flexibly managed.

Pin Drill-Through or Pivot Dashboards

Customers: ANZ Bank

Description

This enhancement enables the ability to pin any Drill-Through or Pivot dashboards. This way, you can conveniently access them from Germain UX’s Workspace Menu > Dashboards.

Rage Click Counter on User Session Replay Window

Customers: American Airlines

Description

A Rage Click counter is now prominently displayed on Replay windows. This addition enhances the ability to comprehend which part of the user interface (UI) a user interacted with repeatedly, offering valuable insights into user behavior.

Reordering Pinned Dashboards

Customers: American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, Healthcare

Description

This enhancement enables the reordering of all User-Pinned Dashboards under Workspace Menu > Dashboards.

Report Dashboard

Customers: Allan Gray, American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

The Report Dashboard is now accessible to facilitate the management of Automated Reports.

User Role Lookup Mechanism Enhanced for Business Impact Analysis

Customers: General Electric

Description

In order to comprehensively grasp which segments of an organization are affected by a UX issue, Germain has the capacity to automatically identify the role of a user who encountered a UX problem. Although this feature has been available since 2014, the 2023.3 Release presents refinements for increased flexibility. Recognizing the user's role varies across applications such as Salesforce, Siebel, Shopify, etc., and can sometimes be complex.

To elaborate, we have introduced support for Key Expressions with multiple values. The Key Expression leverages the existing keyproperty, now allowing you to specify multiple fields, such as user,system.environment. This generates a key in the format of: <username>|<environment>.

Example (for Oracle Siebel CRM)

In this case for Oracle Siebel CRM:

select u.LOGIN, p.POSTN_TYPE_CD "Primary Role"
from siebel.s_contact e, siebel.S_USER u, siebel.S_POSTN p
where 1=1
and e.pr_held_postn_id = p.par_row_id
and e.par_row_id = u.par_row_i

Workspace Branch Name of Oracle Siebel CRM

Customers: eBay

Description

The Oracle Siebel CRM Workspace Branch Name is now captured and accessible on any Germain UX RCA dashboard. This enhancement facilitates simplified troubleshooting of issues.

Workspace-Level Decimal Point Configuration

Customers: American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, Healthcare

Description

This enhancement grants users the capability to establish a default Decimal Point setting at the Germain UX Workspace Level. As a result, there's no longer a need to manually configure it for each individual Portlet across all Dashboards. Moreover, this setting can be customized at the portlet or dashboard level, allowing for specific overrides as required.

MAINTENANCE FEATURES

Data Source Dashboard

Customers: Allan Gray, American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

The Data Source dashboard is now accessible, allowing you to effectively manage all the data sources from which Germain UX collects data or executes transactions. A Data Source can encompass any software or hardware resource. Furthermore, the customization of Data Source categories, among other entities, is available to better align with various environments.

Distributed Storage for Static Resources

Customers: Online Stock Trading Platform

Description

Germain has transitioned to utilizing AWS/S3 for storing large static resources through the utilization of ExternalResourceAdapter. Previously, static resources were stored on the filesystem, necessitating the configuration of network shares across servers hosting Tomcat instances.

Elastic 8.x Support

Customers: Healthcare

Description

Germain UX has been enhanced to provide support for utilizing Elastic 8.x as a data store, expanding the range of supported versions beyond our previous offerings.

Enhanced Security for Kibana and Germain Communication

Customers: Healthcare

Description

In order to establish secure login functionality for Kibana and ensure encrypted communication between the Elastic Search data store and Germain Services, please refer to: Securing Elastic Search and Kibana

Enhancements to Germain UX - RUM Extension for Non-Javascript Injectable Applications (e.g. Salesforce Lightning, Classic)

Customers: Allan Gray, American Airlines, eBay, General Electric, SPB, Healthcare

Description

The Germain UX - RUM Extension, designed to monitor real user experiences of applications without requiring JavaScript injection, has received several updates to improve functionality in such scenarios (e.g. Salesforce Lightning, Classic).

1. Centralized Browser Extension Configuration: The configuration settings for the browser extension are now fetched from the Germain Enterprise Server, streamlining the setup process.

2. Cross Origin iFrame Support: The extension now includes support for cross-origin iFrames, expanding its capabilities to monitor a wider range of embedded content.

3. Multiple Germain URL Support: Many clients operate both QA and PROD instances of the monitored application as well as the monitoring application (Germain UX). This enhancement enables Monitored Users to install a single Germain RUM Extension in their browser, which can seamlessly transmit UX data to either the QA or Prod environments.

These updates collectively enhance the Germain UX - RUM Extension's versatility and ease of use for applications where traditional JavaScript injection is not feasible.

Support for Tomcat 9

Customers: Healthcare

Description

Germain Enterprise is now compatible with Tomcat 9, offering the capability to run on this version of the server.

Security and Vulnerabilities Fixes

Customers: All customers are required to apply the following patches to update Germain

Description

In alignment with our SOC2 compliance program, we are notifying you about security vulnerabilities identified in Germain version 2023.2. We have developed patches to address these issues in both version 2023.2 and older releases. Our commitment is to provide you with comprehensive assistance regarding these concerns. If you haven't already, kindly generate a ticket through Germain Support Ticket Creation or reach out via email at support@germainux.com.

2023.2-32
Download:
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMEngine-2023.2-32-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMEngine-2023.2-32-binary.zip
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMServer-2023.2-32-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMServer-2023.2-32-binary.zip
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMService-2023.2-32-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMService-2023.2-32-binary.zip

Docker:
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-engines:2023.2-32
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-server:2023.2-32
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-services:2023.2-32

2023.3-21
Download:
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMEngine-2023.3-21-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMEngine-2023.3-21-binary.zip
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMServer-2023.3-21-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMServer-2023.2-21-binary.zip
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMService-2023.3-21-binary.tar.gz
https://germain-apm.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/GermainAPM/2023/GermainAPMService-2023.3-21-binary.zip

Docker:
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-engines:2023.3-21
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-server:2023.3-21
public.ecr.aws/h0m9e4y5/germainapm-services:2023.3-21