KPIs for Android App Monitoring | Germain Documentation

KPIs for Android Application Monitoring

📋 Overview

GermainUX provides preconfigured KPIs for monitoring Android application usage, performance, errors, transactions, and device conditions.

The available data depends on:

Factor
GermainUX Mobile App library version
Android version
Application permissions
Enabled monitoring features
Custom application instrumentation
Device and operating-system restrictions

Custom KPIs can also be created for application-specific events, transactions, and business processes.

⚙️ Preconfigured KPIs

KPI	Data model	Description
Mobile App Crash	`MobileEvent`	Application crash caused by a captured unhandled exception
Mobile App Error	`MobileEvent`	Application error or handled exception
Mobile App Event	`MobileEvent`	Application lifecycle, system, or custom event
Mobile App Fragment Load	`MobileTransaction`	Load duration for a supported Android fragment
Mobile App Transaction	`MobileTransaction`	Duration and context of a custom application transaction
Mobile App Uptime	`MobileTransaction`	Monitored application uptime and foreground or background duration
Mobile App Usage	`MobileMetric`	Application usage measurement
Mobile App View Navigation	`MobileTransaction`	Duration of navigation to a supported activity or view
Mobile Battery Level	`MobileMetric`	Device battery level available to the application
Mobile CPU Usage	`MobileMetric`	CPU usage available through the configured monitoring
Mobile Disk Usage	`MobileMetric`	Storage usage available to the application
Mobile Memory Usage	`MobileMetric`	Device memory measurement available to the application
Mobile Network Bandwidth	`MobileMetric`	Configured network-bandwidth measurement
Mobile Network Usage	`MobileMetric`	Network usage available to the monitored application
Mobile Process Memory	`MobileProcessMetric`	Memory used by the monitored application process
Mobile Service	`MobileMetric`	Status or measurement of a configured Android service

Not every KPI is populated automatically. Some require permissions, supported Android APIs, enabled configuration, or custom instrumentation.

🛡️ Application Stability KPIs

💥 Mobile App Crash

Captures crashes reported through automatic unhandled-exception monitoring or the explicit crash API.

Useful measures include:

Measure
Crash count
Unique crash types
Affected users
Affected sessions
Crash rate
First and last occurrence

Useful pivots include:

Pivot
Exception name
Application version
Android version
Device manufacturer and model
Screen or fragment
Transaction
User session

Mobile App Error

Captures application errors and handled exceptions submitted to GermainUX.

Use this KPI for software failures that do not necessarily terminate the application. Expected user validation should be categorized separately so it does not inflate the application-error rate.

🔔 Mobile App Event

Captures supported:

Event type
Application lifecycle events
System events
Custom events
Low-memory notifications
Foreground and background transitions
Application startup events

System-event availability varies by Android version, permissions, application state, and device manufacturer.

📈 Performance KPIs

🐌 Mobile App Fragment Load

Measures the load duration of supported Android fragments.

Use it to identify:

Issue
Slow fragments
Release regressions
Device-specific performance problems
Business-process steps with poor performance

Measures navigation duration for supported Android activities and views.

Custom UI frameworks, including navigation that does not use standard activity or fragment lifecycles, may require custom transaction instrumentation.

🛠️ Mobile App Transaction

Measures custom operations instrumented with:

GermainAPM.startTransaction(...)
GermainAPM.endTransaction(...)

Transactions can represent:

Transaction type
Network requests
Data synchronization
Local database operations
Authentication
Search
Form submission
Order processing
Custom business-process steps

Useful measures include count, average duration, median, percentiles, maximum duration, failure count, and affected users.

👥 Usage KPIs

⏰ Mobile App Uptime

Measures the application lifetime observed by GermainUX, including available foreground and background duration.

Android does not always notify an application before terminating its process. A complete final uptime value may therefore be unavailable for some executions.

📈 Mobile App Usage

Provides application-usage measurements that can be analyzed with:

Metric
Active users
Sessions
Application version
Android version
Device
Environment
Time period
User role or segment, when configured

Combine usage data with screens, fragments, events, and business-process transactions for more detailed adoption analysis.

🔋 Device and Resource KPIs

🔌 Battery

Mobile Battery Level helps determine whether application behavior or failures correlate with battery state.

Battery information should be used as application context rather than as a complete device-management solution.

💻 CPU and memory

Use the following KPIs to analyze resource conditions available to the monitored application:

KPI
Mobile CPU Usage
Mobile Memory Usage
Mobile Process Memory

These metrics can help investigate slow transactions, low-memory events, freezes, or crashes.

📁 Disk

Mobile Disk Usage captures storage information accessible to the application. Use it to identify whether limited storage correlates with failed downloads, synchronization, caching, or file operations.

📡 Network

Use:

KPI
Mobile Network Bandwidth
Mobile Network Usage

These KPIs provide available network context for analyzing slow or failed operations. They do not replace network-carrier or device-management telemetry.

✅ Recommended Measures

Depending on the KPI, configure:

Measure
Count
Unique users
Affected sessions
Average
Median
Percentiles
Minimum and maximum
Duration
Error or crash rate
Success and failure rates
Trend compared with the previous period
Deviation from a baseline

Analyze percentiles and affected-user counts alongside averages. Averages can hide serious problems affecting a smaller user group.

🔎 Recommended Pivots

Useful dimensions include:

Dimension
Application
Environment
Application version
Android version
Device manufacturer
Device model
User or role
Session
View or activity
Fragment
Transaction
Event or error name
Network state
Geographic region, when approved
Business process
Release

Avoid using personal or high-cardinality values as pivots unless they are necessary and approved.

🏗️ Business-Process KPIs

Create business-process monitoring from relevant mobile events, views, fragments, and transactions.

Common business-process measurements include:

Measurement
Processes started
Processes completed
Processes failed
Processes abandoned
Completion rate
Failure rate
Abandonment rate
End-to-end duration
Step duration
Process overrun
Lost productivity

A screen visit alone does not confirm that a process step succeeded. Use a transaction or custom event when completion must be verified.

🚨 Alerts

Configure alerts for conditions such as:

Alert condition
New crash signature
Increased crash rate
Increased application errors
Slow application launch
Slow fragment or view navigation
Critical transaction failure
Performance regression after a release
Repeated low-memory conditions
Increased business-process abandonment
Missing expected telemetry

Use minimum-volume, duration, and recurrence requirements to avoid noisy alerts.

📊 Dashboards and Reports

Android dashboards can include:

Dashboard item
Active users and sessions
Application usage
Crashes and affected users
Errors and exceptions
Launch and navigation performance
Slowest fragments
Custom transactions
Business-process effectiveness
Application-version comparison
Android and device breakdown
CPU, memory, storage, battery, and network context

Scheduled reports can summarize current values, trends, changes compared with the previous period, new errors, and affected user populations.

✅ Validation

After enabling Android monitoring:

Confirm that expected KPIs receive data.
Verify application and environment names.
Generate a controlled event, transaction, and handled exception.
Validate crash collection in a safe test build.
Navigate through supported activities and fragments.
Confirm that device metrics are available where expected.
Verify data across debug and release builds.
Confirm that sensitive attributes are excluded.
Test dashboard filters, alerts, and reports.

ℹ️ Get Help

The Germain Team can help you set this up. Contact GermainUX Support.

Component: Engine, Mobile App, RUM JS

Feature Availability: 2022.1 or later