Configuration for User Monitoring and Replay

Step-by-step configuration of Germain UX's User Session Monitoring and Session Replay.

Enable

By default, User Session Replay is enabled for each User Monitoring Profile. If it has been disabled, you can re-enable it by following these steps:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > UX Monitoring Profiles

2. Select a profile

3. Check 'Session Replay Monitoring' and click 'Save' to apply your changes.

Disable

You can disable User Session Replay for each UX Monitoring Profile by following these steps:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > UX Monitoring Profiles

2. Select a profile

3. Uncheck 'Session Replay Monitoring' and click 'Save' to apply your changes.

You can also disable User Session Replay for all profiles at once by turning off Session Replay Data in the general UX and Session Replay Settings. Please follow the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > System > UX and Session Replay Settings

2. Disable 'Session Replay Data' and click 'Save' to apply your changes.

Session Timeout

By default, any ongoing session will time out if no event has been collected one hour after the last received event. The session will be marked as 'Timed Out,' and the ongoing session will be closed. The next event received after this timeout threshold will start a new session.

To configure the Session Timeout threshold, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > System > UX and Session Replay Settings

2. Update the 'Session Timeout (in minutes)' field in the Session Replay section to the desired value.

3. Click 'Save' to apply your changes.

Session Recording Length

You can configure Germain UX so that the user session is recorded for a fixed length, e.g., 1 hour. By default, there is no limit on the session recording duration.

Use settings.constants.maxSessionDurationMillis in the Init Script to set the maximum session recording duration.

The following code sample demonstrates how to configure it for 1 hour:

const settings = germainApm.getDefaultSettings();
...
settings.constants.maxSessionDurationMillis = 3600; // 1 hour value in milliseconds
...
germainApm.start(settings);

Events and Transactions Stream

The list of events and transactions available on the right-hand side of the user session replay player is configurable. By default, we show all KPIs that can be correlated with the User Session Replay; however, you can disable some from the player by following the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > KPIs

2. Select 'User Session Replay KPI'

3. Update the 'Child KPIs' multi-select list

4. Click 'Save' to apply your changes.

Rage Click Monitoring Configuration

The following code sample demonstrates how to change the number of consecutive clicks on the same page element (set to 4) and the maximum duration (in milliseconds) between each of them (set to 300 ms) to trigger a rage click event.

const settings = germainApm.getDefaultSettings();
...
settings.plugins.click.rageClickCounter = 4;
settings.plugins.rageClickThresholdMillis = 300; // in milliseconds
...
germainApm.start(settings);

User Activity

User activity periods are represented by orange bars at the top of the Session Replay player. These periods of time represent multiple consecutive events done by the end user on the monitored application.

To configure what type of events you want to take into account to generate these activity periods and what shouldn’t, follow the steps below. This configuration applies to all UX Monitoring Profiles:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > System > UX and Session Replay Settings

2. Update the 'User Activity' multi-select field in the Session Replay section (all events selected in the list will generate user activities).

3. Click 'Save' to apply your changes.

Data Privacy (GDPR, PCI)

Similar to any other data collected by Germain, you have full control over the data captured by Germain's JS or browser extension. You decide what data is collected, what isn't, and whether the data is encrypted or anonymized. All of these configurations are customizable according to your preferences.

Data Privacy (GDPR, PCI)

Roles

Bot/Crawler Agent Exclusion (Googlebot, Yandex bot, etc)

You can disable User Experience Monitoring for selected user agents. Use this feature if you don’t want UX monitoring data from particular bots, crawlers, or end users' browsers.

By default, we exclude the following bots:

• Baiduspider

• Bingbot

• DuckDuckBot

• Exabot

• Facebot and Facebookexternalhit

• Googlebot

• Ia_archiver

• Sogou

• Slurp

• YandexBot

Configuration

You can enable or disable default Bot/Crawler Agent Exclusion settings when deploying RUM JS monitoring for the first time by activating the Bot/Crawler Agent Exclusion option on the wizard.

To update the Bot/Crawler Agent Exclusion list, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > UX Monitoring Profiles

2. Select a profile

3. Add/Modify/Remove user agents under 'Excluded User Agents'

The following example displays all enabled default excluded user agents.

User Exclusion

Blacklist and Whitelist IP Configuration

You can enable or disable User Monitoring and Replay for selected IPs or IP ranges.

Use the blacklist feature if you don’t want UX monitoring data, e.g., from your automated or synthetic users.

Use the include feature if you want UX monitoring data only from certain desktops/users (whitelist settings will override blacklist settings).

By default, the blacklist and whitelist are empty. An empty whitelist means that UX monitoring is enabled for all IP addresses. You can provide either a single IP or a comma-separated start IP and end IP.

Configuration:

To configure Blacklist/Whitelist IP, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > UX Monitoring Profiles

2. Select a profile

3. Add a new IP exclusion under 'Excluded IP Ranges'

4. Add a new IP whitelist under 'Included IP Ranges'

The following example shows one excluded IP (10.0.1.1) and one whitelisted IP range (all IP addresses between 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.255.255, including start and end, will be included).

Exclude user names Configuration

You can disable User Monitoring for selected named users. Use this feature if you don’t want UX monitoring data from your automated or synthetic users.

Note: User Monitoring and Replay will be deployed for all users as it needs to extract the username first, but the monitoring will not start if the extracted user belongs to the Excluded Usernames list.

Configuration:

To configure User Exclusion, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Germain Workspace > Left Menu > Analytics > UX Monitoring Profiles

2. Select a profile

3. Add/Modify/Remove usernames under 'Excluded Usernames'

The following example shows three users who are going to be excluded, and the User Monitoring data will not be collected for them.

Component: RUM JS, RUM Ext