Analyzing end-user experience with the User tier

The User tier in the Application View provides a visual indication about the page performance, in the selected five-minute period, compared to the set Minor and Critical thresholds. The User tier reflects the experience from the end user's point of view. An end user is considered active if the user interacts with a page, or if an open page invokes an AJAX request (even without user interaction).

This topic describes how to use the User tier to identify performance and availability problems in your application.

Before you begin

To see the Application View tab, your system must include BMC TrueSight App Visibility Manager, including the App Visibility proxy component.

You must have Application Operator-level access, or higher.

Determine if end users are experiencing problems with the application

In the Application View, the User tier displays the number of user that are experiencing one or more problems (latency violations or errors) with pages, page operations, or application issues during the selected period. The tier displays the number of users that are adversely impacted by latency violations or errors:

Impacted Users (number inside the circle). Number of active end users in the selected five-minute period that are experiencing latency issues or errors that exceed the defined thresholds.
Colored part of the circle. Ratio of impacted users to total number of users. The color reflects whether the percentage of users experiencing issues exceeds the defined thresholds.
Total. Total number of active application users in the selected five-minute period

App Visibility Manager adds the BMCTSEUM cookie to the browsers of end users and reads the cookies to monitor user experience.

The following example describes the information in the User tier:

Example of the User tier

For the five-minute period reflected in the example, the User tier shows that the number of active end users experiencing latency issues or errors is 217 out of a total number of 1,863 active users. The colored part of the circles shows that approximately 10% of all the users are impacted at the time.

To analyze web page problems with the User tier

On the Application View tab of the Application Monitoring page, position the time slider to select a five-minute period of interest.
Click the User tier to display the following information:
- Overview graph showing the total number of users, and the number of impacted users, over a 24-hour period.
- List of problems in the selected five-minute period
Example of the User Tier Overview and problem list

Evaluating the User Tier Overview

In the User Tier Overview section, you can see a graph of the total number of users over a 24-hour period.

Hover over the graph to see the number of users and, where applicable, the number of impacted users.

Evaluating the User tier problems list

The table lists a summary of the detected problems that users are experiencing for the selected five-minute period.

The following details are displayed on the table. Click a column heading to sort entries by that category.

Column	Description
Severity icon	Representation of the severity level of events on the User tier
Problem	Brief problem description, such as User error rate
Problem Started	Date and time that the problem started which caused the event severity If the problem started earlier than the displayed time, click the start time to reset the time selection. The time slider moves to the five-minute period that includes the problem start time.
Value/Threshold	Maximum value of the parameter during the selected period, and the value of the configured threshold
Current Status	Open or Closed, which represents the current status of the problem, and time in which the problem was resolved, if applicable

Where to go from here

To see a list of user transactions and operations for the selected five-minute period, select View User Transactions from the User Tier Overview action menu.