Tips & Tricks Part Two: Using the Dashboard

When designing the front-end for Raygun we put a lot of thought into UX concerns. Our older customers will notice that the UI has undergone an overhaul recently based on our experience since launch and customer feedback. The first iteration of the Raygun dashboard was designed to present the data with a minimum of fuss. The way it stands today represents an evolution of our initial concepts and has features that streamline common tasks, and represents a closer view of the Raygun we dreamed of building. Today’s post will focus on the usability improvements in the dashboard, and how you can utilize the workflow to fix errors fast.

Error resolving

In an application’s main Dashboard View, you’ll find rows of error groups stating their total occurrence count and the last time an error was received for the group. The checkboxes beside the rows can be used to resolve or ignore one or more error groups (when one is checked, a drop down will appear in the header). Ignoring an error group will hide it from the active tab, until a new error instance is received. Permanently ignoring an error group will remove it from the Daily Digest email, and it won’t be reactivated when a new error appears in that group.

Filtering errors by time with the chart

The chart at the top of the main Dashboard View displays the total error count for all groups over time. When the page is first loaded the chart will display the last seven days of data, while the list below it will show all errors going back to the beginning of time (if you click the ‘more’ button enough times). Below it you’ll see the bar chart containing a summary of all errors within your plan retention window. It’s clickable, and if you do that a selector brush will appear which allows you to pick a time range to view. The error list below the chart will display any errors that occurred during that time range. Bonus tip: hold down the ‘alt’ or ‘option’ key while dragging the handles of the selector to move both ends at once from the center. Using the slider, you can view any error that your application caused right back to the start of your plan retention window!

The error group comments can also be sorted by clicking on their headers (message, time occurred and count) for ascending and descending views.

Version filtering

This much-requested feature made its debut a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been well received by the community. If your app has been passing its version number to the provider a drop-down will appear in the Dashboard View allowing you to select and filter by version. If you’re on 3.1, no need to worry about early beta versions any more!

Inside an error

There’s a few highlights in the error group view to note, one of which was announced last week. That is of course affected user tracking, which allows you to view the exact count of users who saw this error. We’ve also surfaced the OS and browser statistics (if it was sent from a web environment), so you can prioritize support for certain platforms if some are resulting in more errors.

The Activity feature displayed above the Exception Details has a form for comments, which is invaluable if you’ve got an organization account. Team members can be updated at a glance with the current status of an error, for instance the reason why it was ignored.

Also have a look at the Raw tab, too. Some providers send specialized information (like Android which transmits device hardware info) that’s viewable in the raw payload.