Prerequisites and connection

What you will learn in this section :

• Access the Dynatrace SaaS environment
• Prepare your workspace for the lab

Please contact your trainer to obtain the connection credentials.

Discovery of applications

What you will learn in this section :

• Differentiate application types (Experience Vitals, Web, Mobile, Frontend)
• Access an application for our analysis

1. Application types

   In Dynatrace, applications are categorized to better adapt data collection. What is the difference between a Web, Mobile and Frontend application?

2. Access to the EasyTrade application

   For the rest of this lab, we will work on the 'EasyTrade' web application and analyze it in the 'Frontend' Dynatrace application. Find and access this application from the main menu.

Performance analysis

What you will learn in this section :

• Understand the application's Apdex score
• Compare the current week's Apdex with last week's
• Find the application's Core Web Vitals

1. Apdex comparison

   Display the comparison between this week's Apdex and last week's. This is very useful in a company, for example, to verify performance gains or losses following a recent deployment to production (MEP).

2. Core Web Vitals

   In this section, use the Experience Vitals application to quickly find our application's core web vitals.
   
   

   If you want details on the difference between apdex vs core web vitals you should read this article : Apdex vs Core Web Vitals.

Underlying services analysis

What you will learn in this section :

• Identify and display the services contributing to the application's functioning
• Access the application's Smartscape view

1. Display connected services

   Find how to display the list of services that are called by the EasyTrade application.

2. Smartscape view (Smartscape topology)

   Find how to access the Smartscape view (Smartscape topology) specific to the EasyTrade application to visualize its end-to-end dependencies.

Resources analysis

What you will learn in this section :

• Differentiate 1st party, CDN and 3rd party resources
• Specifically display 3rd party resources

1. Resources categorization

   Dynatrace automatically classifies your application's resources. Familiarize yourself with the different categories.

2. Display 3rd party resources

   Display the list of '3rd party resources' for the EasyTrade application.

User behavior

What you will learn in this section :

• Display the distribution between new users and returning (old) users
• Display user types (Real users, Synthetic, Robots)

1. New vs Returning users

   Find how to display the distribution between the number of new users (New users) and known/returning users (Returning users).
   

2. User types

   Find how to display the distribution of user types visiting your application.
   
   

   Difference between user types:

   • Real users : These are the real human visitors interacting with your application via their browser or mobile device.
   • Synthetic : These are the executions of your own synthetic monitors (Dynatrace robots) configured to test your application's availability and performance.
   • Robots : These are web bots, crawlers, and spiders (e.g., Googlebot, Bingbot) automatically detected by Dynatrace.

   
   
   

User sessions

What you will learn in this section :

• Access user sessions
• Verify GDPR activation
• Analyze a session's details
• Visualize a session replay

GDPR Risk: The collection of session data may include personally identifiable information (PII). It is crucial to ensure user consent is obtained and sensitive data is masked to be fully compliant with GDPR.

1. Access user sessions

   Find how to list all user sessions for the application.

2. GDPR status

   Check if the privacy compliance option (Data privacy / GDPR) is properly enabled for this application.
   
   

   Collection configuration: To configure this, go to the application settings (Settings) > Data privacy. You can enable 'Opt-in mode' there (which requires explicit consent via a cookie) and configure the masking of IP addresses, keystrokes, and session data (Masking).
   
   Check out this article for more details: GDPR Management in Dynatrace.

3. Session details

   Open a specific user session and browse the available details.

4. Session replay

   Find how to launch 'Session Replay' (if available) to see the user's screen as if it were a video.
   
   

   Session Replay Generation: Dynatrace does not capture a standard video stream (which would be heavy and pose strong security issues). Instead, it records DOM (HTML/CSS) mutations and events (mouse, scroll) on the browser side, which it then reconstructs as a 'movie'. Password input fields are automatically masked.

USQL queries

What you will learn in this section :

• Access the User sessions query interface
• Understand basic USQL syntax
• Filter user sessions with errors
• Use aggregation functions like GROUP BY

USQL (User Session Query Language) is Dynatrace's query language for analyzing DEM data. Its syntax is very similar to the standard SQL SELECT statement.

The 4 USQL tables:

• usersession : Contains global information about the session (e.g., operating system, duration, location).
• useraction : Contains data on each user action (e.g., page load, click).
• userevent : Contains custom events triggered during the session.
• usererror : Groups all errors (JavaScript, network requests) encountered by the user.

1. Access User sessions query

   Find how to access the user session query interface (User sessions query).

2. Basic query

   Write a USQL query to list all user sessions that encountered at least one error (JavaScript error, network error, etc.).
   

   Tip: The interface offers a very useful auto-completion feature. Feel free to use it to easily build your USQL queries without having to memorize the entire syntax.

3. Browser analysis

   Write a USQL query to count the number of sessions grouped by browser family (browserFamily) to identify the most used browsers.
   
   

   Display modes: Once the query is executed, you can modify how the results are presented using the display options (note that some display modes require specific data formatting):

   • Table only: Standard data table display.
   • Bar chart: Bar chart representation, ideal for comparing volumes between different categories (as here, the number of sessions per browser).
   • Pie chart: Pie chart representation, perfect for visualizing each category's proportion relative to the total.
   • Line chart: Time curve representation (requires including a time dimension in the query).
   • Single value: Displays a single value (useful for queries returning a single result like a global COUNT).
   • Funnel: Funnel representation to visualize drop-offs at each step of a journey.

4. Add to classic dashboard

   Find how to add the result of your USQL query to a classic dashboard (Dashboard classic) so you can quickly view it later without having to re-type the query.

Building a Funnel

What you will learn in this section :

• Understand the concept of a funnel
• Build a multi-step USQL query
• Analyze a user conversion journey

1. Page loads identification

   Create a USQL query to list the loaded pages ('Load' type actions) for the 'HipsterShopLogs' application, grouping them by name and counting the number of occurrences.
   
   

   Information: This query is not mandatory to create a funnel. However, when you are not very familiar with an application, it proves very useful to identify relevant pages and actions to include in the different steps of your funnel.

   

2. Conversion funnel creation

   Create a USQL query generating a 4-step funnel simulating a classic journey, for example: Homepage -> Product list -> View cart -> Checkout.