Real User Monitoring - Page Groups Report

Whenever administrators figure out a sudden slowdown in the response of a web site/web application, he/she needs to analyze whether the page groups are consistently slow or is the slowdown sporadic with a sudden increase in page views over a period of time. The Page Groups Performance report helps administrators to generate a report using which administrators can analyze the past performance trends of the page groups by deducing the answers to the following questions:

Which are the page groups that are contributing to the slowdowns?
Are the page groups consistently slow or is it during a particular timeperiod alone?
How many page groups are affected due to high frontend time, network time and backend time?
Is the performance of the page groups affected due to an increasing page views trend?

To generate this report, do the following:

Login to eG Reporter.
Follow the menu sequence: REPORTS BY FUNCTION -> RUM Reports -> Page Groups Performance.
will then appear. From , select the service from the Service list box for which the report is to be generated.
The Component list will then be populated with the components that are associated with the chosen Service. Select a component of your choice from this list.

Figure 1 : Generating the Page Group Performance report
By default, the report provides the details of only the Top-3 page groups in the chosen Component. You can choose a different top-n option from the Show Top list, if need be.
Provide a report Timeline. You can either select a fixed timeline such as 1 hour, 2 days, etc., or choose the Any option from the Timeline list, and then provide a From and To date/time for report generation.

Note:

For every user registered with the eG Enterprise system, the administrator can indicate the maximum timeline for which that user can generate a report. Once the maximum timeline is set for a user, then, whenever that user logs into eG Reporter and attempts to generate a report, the Timeline list box in the report page will display options according to the maximum timeline setting of that user. For instance, if a user can generate a report for a maximum period of 3 days only, then 3 days will be the highest option displayed in the Timeline list - i.e., 3 days will be the last option in the fixed Timeline list. Similarly, if the user chooses the Any option from the Timeline list and proceeds to provide a start date and end date for report generation using the From and To specifications, eG Enterprise will first check if the user's Timeline specification conforms to his/her maximum timeline setting. If not, report generation will fail. For instance, for a user who is allowed to generate reports spanning over a maximum period of 3 days only, the difference between the From and To dates should never be over 3 days. If it is, then, upon clicking the Run Report button a message box will appear, prompting the user to change the From and To specification.
In addition to the settings discussed above, this report comes with a set of default specifications. These settings are hidden by default. If you do not want to disturb these default settings, then you can proceed to generate the report by clicking the Run Report button soon after you pick a Measure. However, if you want to view and then alter these settings (if required), click on the icon. The default settings will then appear in the MORE OPTIONS drop down window (see Figure 2). The steps below discuss each of these settings and how they can be customized.

Figure 2 : The default settings for generating a System Capacity Analysis report by service
If the timeline specified for the report needs to exclude the data collected during the Weekends, then set Exclude weekends to Yes. If not, select No.

Note:

By default, the weekend constitutes Saturday and Sunday. To override this default setting, do the following:
- Edit the eg_report.ini file in the <EG_INSTALL_DIR>\manager\config directory.
- In the [RUM_PGP_REPORT] section of the file, the EXCLUDE_WEEKEND parameter is set to Saturday, Sunday by default. You can modify this by setting the EXCLUDE_WEEKEND parameter to a comma-separated list of other days of the week - say Friday, Saturday.
- Save the file after making the required changes.
Next, specify the start time and end time for report generation against the Time period field.
In large environments, reports generated using months of data can take a long time to complete. Administrators now have the option of generating reports on-line or in the background. When a report is scheduled for background generation, administrators can proceed with their other monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting tasks, while the eG manager is processing the report. This saves the administrator valuable time. To schedule background processing of a report, select the Background Save - PDF option from the Report Generation list. In this case, a Report Name text box will appear, where you would have to provide the name with which the report is to be saved in the background. To process reports in the foreground, select the Foreground Generation - HTML option from this list.

Note:
- The Report Generation list will appear only if the EnableBackgroundReport flag in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file (in the [EG_INSTALL_DIR]\manager\config directory) is set to Yes.
- The default selection in the Report Generation list will change according to the Timeline specified for the report. If the Timeline set is greater than or equal to the number of days specified against the MinDurationForReport parameter in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Background. On the other hand, if the Timeline set for the report is lesser than the value of the MinDurationForReport parameter, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Foreground. This is because, the MinDurationForReport setting governs when reports are to be processed in the background. By default, this parameter is set to 2 weeks - this indicates that by default, reports with a timeline of 2 weeks and above will be processed in the background.
Finally, click the Run Report button to generate the report.

Figure 3 : The Page Groups Performance report
The report in Figure 3 is generated for analyzing the critical page groups of an e-commerce web site. This report is divided into the following sections:
- A Summary section that reveals the total number of page views to the web site/web application during the chosen time period. This section helps the administrators to view the overall user experience by reporting a breakup of page views of the users who are satisfied, tolerating and frustrated. Besides this information, a pie chart showing the distribution of the user experience can visually help administrators identify the percentage of users who are in the satisfied category, tolerating category and the frustrated category.
- A Top N Analysis – Page Groups section reveals the critical page groups that are suffering from high frontend time, network time and backend time. By analyzing the generated report, administrators may be able to correlate the overall page load time with the frontend time/network time/backend time for the critical page groups and figure out the exact problematic area. For example, by viewing the above report, administrators can figure out that the backend time of the AddToCart.jsp is high i.e., the backend time contributes to the most of the page load time causing inconvenience to the users when they are trying to add products to the shopping cart. This way, administrators can figure out the top critical page groups that are suffering from high frontend/network/backend time and are contributing to the poor user experience. Using this report administrators can fine tune the page groups before end users start complaining about the inaccessibility/slow accessibility of the page group.