Why Your Business Needs Error Monitoring Software

Key Points

• For businesses, error monitoring software is crucial, which quickly recognizes, checks and resolves unexpected errors, ensuring that the software remains fully functional without user feedback or error reports.
• Modern error monitoring software tools can track and resolve issues across teams, send notifications immediately when an error occurs, and provide detailed reporting information about the error, including the exact location in the code and related user data.
• Error monitoring software is an enterprise's safety net that provides a level of quality assurance, helping to quickly identify and fix possible errors after release, thereby reducing downtime and potential loss of revenue.
• Implementing error monitoring software is simple and can be seamlessly integrated with existing workflows and development tools to provide enhanced quality control for enterprises throughout the development process and after product release.

This article is sponsored by Airbrake. Thank you for supporting the partners who made SitePoint possible.

Modern software applications are flexible and powerful tools. These apps offer users a wide range of features, from communicating with loved ones and colleagues, to getting knowledge from millions of crowdsourcing articles, to diagnosing diseases and potentially saving lives, and even building the next great app, which could be It will provide more amazing possibilities.

However, companies such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Watson have not achieved great success in everything smoothly. Software development is difficult, but for most modern applications, publishing a project to the public domain is only the first step. After release, monitoring and maintenance is critical for most public-facing applications to ensure that the product can handle the load, run as expected, be financially viable and of course, not crash with unexpected errors.

Even in projects where the entire software development life cycle is very smooth, unexpected errors can quickly cause the service to stop running, and even in the worst case the application will crash completely.

This is the power of error monitoring software. Even during development, especially after release, error monitoring software can provide your organization with the assurances you need to ensure your software remains fully functional. Any unforeseen errors can be quickly identified, checked and resolved without user feedback or error reports.

To better examine how your business can benefit from error monitoring software, we will explore its advantages by answering six W-related questions: who, what, when, where, why and how. Finally, you should better understand how your business can benefit from using error monitoring software for your projects.

Who received this error?

Error monitoring software is designed to inform you and your team immediately when an error occurs, whether through email, code hooks, or integration with other services. Best of all, since the error monitor can easily hook into your own application code, you will receive detailed reporting information about the error or problem that occurred, including the corresponding user data. This may include the account information of the affected user, the location of the user when the error occurred, the device used by the user, the operating system version, the browser version, the session data, and so on. In short, error monitoring software can automatically provide you with detailed information about the individuals who are experiencing the error so that you can better serve users.

Who was assigned to resolve the error?

Modern monitoring software includes tools to track and resolve problems throughout the team. This ensures that you will not only be aware of the new exceptions, but also monitor which team members are dealing with the fix for which bugs. By adopting common prioritization techniques in the error suite you receive, your team can easily track issues and develop the best plan to resolve issues in order of importance.

What exact error happened?

Error monitoring software allows you to view the exact nature of the error, as well as the detailed metadata contained in the exception. For example, when an error occurs using Airbrake.io's error monitoring software, Airbrake can report error types/objects, error messages, parameters, detailed backtracking, the environment where the error occurred, client machine data, API methods that generate error calls, The file that caused the error, etc.

Using error monitoring services allows for real debugging without user-generated feedback or reports. When problems arise, the monitor will provide the same level (usually more) details as available to developers when performing step-by-step debugging on source code.

What programming languages ​​and platforms are supported?

It's great to integrate error monitoring software into your development lifecycle, but it needs to be compatible with the language or platform your team is using. Thankfully, most error monitoring services are compatible with all popular languages, and even include some less popular options. For example, Airbrake is currently compatible with 20 officially supported languages ​​and platforms, and always adds more languages ​​and platforms, including well-known names such as .NET, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Node.js and all mobile platforms. In almost every case, if your team is using it, the error monitoring software you choose is likely to be compatible with it.

What service integrations can I use?

Most monitoring services are designed to be directly integrated into your existing workflow without additional work or hassle. To simplify this process, most error monitors are compatible with the most popular development services such as Slack, JIRA, GitHub, BitBucket, Campfire, Trello, and more. Additionally, a good error monitoring service will provide access to Webhooks and integration APIs, allowing your team to create a simple integration to enhance your workflow.

When does the error occur?

Error monitoring software allows you and your team to be notified immediately when an error occurs. However, it is also important that the software will also keep history and timestamp records of all errors. Not only does this allow you to pinpoint exactly when a particular problem or error type occurs, but the friendly interface also summarizes similar errors based on conditions you specify (or even automatically). So, not only can you see when any single instance of error occurs, but you can also view charts and graphics containing information about the issue over a period of time, giving you a bird's eye view of progress and how a particular version or patch improves or affects the issue occur.

When is it suitable for error monitoring?

The short answer is: throughout the entire software development lifecycle. The longer answer is that it depends on the needs of your team and project. At least, the error monitoring service is excellent once the public beta or version is launched, as the main function of such services is to provide detailed error feedback from wild users without your intervention.

Where is the location in the source code of this error?

It is useful to know that an error occurred in the , but knowing the exact location of the error in the code is the necessary details to quickly and accurately find the cause and solve the problem. Error monitoring software provides detailed reports, including not only the methods or functions that generate the error, but also detailed backtracking, as well as the exact lines of the code that causes this problem. Additionally, when integrated with GitHub or GitLab, you can click on any part of the traceback to go to that line in the source code. Why is error monitoring important?

It is certainly OK to create functional and effective software without the help of error monitoring services. However, especially for projects with a growing user base, doing so requires a lot of foresight and a lot of pre-development time. Not only do you have to emphasize error elimination throughout your life cycle, but you also have to set up components in the published code so that you can provide detailed error feedback from wild users, so when problems arise after production (inevitably) Teams can receive alerts and respond quickly. Of course this is not an impossible task, but it requires a lot of extra work that can be handled easily and inexpensively with error monitoring software.

In short, error monitoring software is a safety net. It doesn’t let your team give up on all levels of quality assurance before and after release, but instead provides some breathing space. With the error monitor, you will know that any unexpected errors (which do slip through the cracks and appear after release) will be immediately discovered and sent to you so that your team can respond quickly and release the fix as soon as possible.

What is the reason for the error?

In most cases, once the software is published to production, getting detailed error reports often requires requesting users affected by the error to take time to find a crash dump or error log from the directory and send it via email Go to your support forum or post to your support forum. Even in cases where your application can provide your team with automatic error dump reports without user intervention, team members need to manually check these reports, or develop a software component that can perform this task for you.

These problems have been largely eliminated using error monitoring software. To figure out why the error occurs, you simply open that specific report in a user-friendly interface and scan for a large amount of information attached to that error instance. Without asking the user to provide a crash dump, you can simply view the error the moment you receive the alert, see which part of the source code is causing the problem and start working on solving the problem.

How many errors are there in our software applications?

Most error monitoring services provide detailed statistics, charts and historical graphs about errors in the software. Not only can you view the aggregated numbers for the entire system, you can also use filtered queries and searches for in-depth analysis to obtain error data that may only occur in production environments, in the past month, and contain word IO. This makes evaluating trends easy, so you can quickly determine if a specific type of error occurs less frequently due to recent patches designed to fix it.

How to start using error monitoring software?

Integrating and starting with error monitoring software is very simple. In most cases, simply sign up for a free trial account, find a programming language or platform that suits your needs, follow the simple instructions to integrate it with your project, and then test it by intentionally creating an error. Most monitoring services allow you to get up and running in five minutes.

From there, you can improve your workflow by integrating error monitoring software with other third-party services your team uses, such as source code control and issue tracking. Once done, you can breathe easily, knowing that all future errors will be automatically tracked and reported on your team, which provides you with a lot of additional quality control throughout the development process and after release to production.

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FAQ for Error Monitoring Software (FAQ)

What is the importance of error monitoring software to my business?

Error monitoring software is crucial to any enterprise that relies on software applications for operations. It helps identify, track and fix errors in real time, ensuring your software applications run smoothly. This not only improves the user experience, but also helps reduce downtime, which can be expensive for businesses. Additionally, it provides insight into software performance, helping you make informed decisions to increase its efficiency and effectiveness.

How does error monitoring software work?

Error monitoring software works by continuously checking your software application for any errors or errors. It does this by tracking the performance of the software and identifying any exceptions that may indicate an error. Once an error is detected, the software alerts you and provides detailed information about the error, including where the error occurred and why it is. This allows you to quickly find and fix bugs, minimizing their impact on your operations.

What features should I look for in the error monitoring software?

When selecting error monitoring software, you should look for features such as real-time error tracking, detailed error reporting, alerting features, and integration with existing software development tools. Additionally, the software should be easy to use and has a user-friendly interface. It should also provide good customer support to help you in the event of any problems.

Can error monitoring software help improve the performance of my software application?

Yes, error monitoring software can significantly improve the performance of software applications. By identifying and fixing errors in real time, it ensures your software runs smoothly and efficiently. Additionally, it provides insight into software performance to help you identify areas that need improvement.

Is error monitoring software expensive?

The cost of error monitoring software varies by its functionality and the size of your business. But, given the benefits it offers, such as improved software performance and reduced downtime, it's a worthwhile investment for any business.

Can I use error monitoring software for mobile applications?

Yes, most error monitoring software can be used in both web and mobile applications. They can track errors across different platforms and devices, ensuring your application runs smoothly on all platforms.

How does error monitoring software help improve user experience?

Error monitoring software helps improve the user experience by ensuring your software applications run smoothly without any errors or errors. This leads to a better user experience as users can use your app without any interruptions or issues.

Can error monitoring software help reduce downtime?

Yes, error monitoring software can significantly reduce downtime by identifying and fixing errors in real time. This not only improves the performance of the software, but also protects you from potential lost revenue due to downtime.

How easy is it to implement error monitoring software?

Most error monitoring software is easy to implement. They come with detailed installation guides and provide customer support to assist you with the implementation process. Additionally, they can easily integrate with your existing software development tools, making the implementation process even easier.

Can error monitoring software help software development?

Yes, error monitoring software can become a valuable tool in software development. It can help developers identify and fix bugs in the early stages of development, thus reducing the time and cost of fixing bugs later. In addition, it provides insight into software performance, helping developers improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

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