Monitor Your App: A complete panel of Titanium monitoring solutions

TiConf NY - Xavier Lacot - May 10th, 2014
Monitor Your App: A Complete Panel of Titanium
Monitoring Solutions

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Hello, I am Xavier
• Founder, Web- and Mobile- expert at JoliCode
• Contributor to several Open Source projects
• Titanium developer since 2009
• Speaker at CodeStrong 2011 and TiConf 2013
• Former President of the French Association of PHP Users
• Co-organizer of the Titanium Paris meetup group
@xavierlacot
TiConf 2014 - Monitor Your App: A Complete Panel of Titanium Monitoring Solutions
TiConf 2014 - Monitor Your App: A Complete Panel of Titanium Monitoring Solutions 2

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Being a Titanium developer...

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Titanium is a superb platform
• develop fast
• code once
• publish on several platforms at once
• have aggregated statistics
It saved us and our clients lot of time and money

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Mobile apps evolve in a challenging context
• various OS
• device fragmentation
• external dependancies
• (usually) lower investments
Running an app in a reliable way, always and accross all devices, is a
hard job

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Many external dependancies
• APIs
• images and assets
• Cloud services / social networks
• in-app billing
• adverts

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Mobile applications mean...
• limited hardware (do not compute complicated things)
• network-bounded (dependancy on APIs, etc):
• do not make dozens of simulataneous http requests
• earth-sized roundtrips are slow → server-side optims + a CDN
• you must test on as many devices ans OS as you can
Even with experience, you will sometimes forget about these rules.

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Bugs, slowness, etc.,
• ...are part of every piece of software's lifecycle
• ...happen
• whatever the amount of tests or your devotion to quality
• ...are not a problem
• ...as long as you detect them and react

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U said monitoring?
• ensure most of the users are satisfied, everytime
• detect bottlenecks and crashes
• reproduce and analyse
• improve / take action
• test and ship

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U said monitoring?
• ensure most of the users are satisfied, everytime
• detect bottlenecks and crashes ← monitoring is here
• reproduce and analyse
• improve / take action
• test and ship

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Several things to monitor (1/2)
• Users amount
How many customers use my apps?
Do the userbase inscrease or decrease in time?
• User bahavior and tracking
How do the users behave?
Can I optimize it (and earn more money/sell more)?
“

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Several things to monitor (2/2)
• Performance / responsiveness
Which parts of my app are slow?
• Reliability and crashes collection
Do some parts of my app crash (sometimes)?
At which frequency?
What are details about crashes?
“

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Monitoring
the users

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TiAnalytics

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Users

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Geography

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Evolution

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Pros / cons
• allows cross-platform monitoring
• works "out of the box" / avail. in Appcelerator Cloud Services ❤
< app ti="http://ti.appcelerator.org">
...
l337iSg00d-‐j0l1-‐c0de-‐rUl3-‐sT1t4n1Um
true
...
app>
• cons / limits:
• the web interface is laggy/buggy?
• free version limited to 1,000,000 events/month
ti: xmlns:
ti:

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Google Analytics

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Dashboard

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Geography

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Real time

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Pros / cons
• available at https://github.com/MattTuttle/titanium-google-analytics
• easy to implement
var GA = require('analytics.google');
var tracker = GA.getTracker(token);
tracker.trackScreen('homepage');
tracker.trackScreen('news');
tracker.trackEvent({
category: 'user_account',
action: 'upload_profile',
label: 'success'
});
• not the "mobile reference"?

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Flurry Analytics

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Flurry Analytics
• one of the major mobile analytics provider
• OSS module (iOS only) available at https://github.com/appcelerator-
modules/ti.flurry. Won't work
• iOS and Android (not x86) at
https://github.com/softgravity/titanium_flurry
• Many features:
• usage statistics
• technical segmentation
• crash collection

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Howto
// enable Flurry analytics
var flurry = require('sg.flurry');
flurry.secureTransport(true);
flurry.logUncaughtExceptions(true);
flurry.crashReportingEnabled(true);
flurry.startSession('WVCDT3VDPJ6BRCJ6GJYS');
// usage
flurry.logEvent('hello', {world: 'TiConf'});
flurry.logError('unknown error', 'no crash');
// some report about the user
flurry.setUserID(user.id);
flurry.setAge(user.age);
// flurry.setGender(flurry.MALE);
// flurry.setLatitude(latitude, longitude);
flurry.logPageView();

6

9
10

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Lookback

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Lookback
• Records the screen, gestures, face & voice of the users

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Howto
• A Titanium module is available (iOS only). Thanks Stephen Feather!
• https://github.com/sfeather/TiLookback
• Usage:
Ti.App.Properties.setString('LookbackAppToken', 'your_app_token');
var Lookback = require('com.featherdirect.lookback');
Lookback.enableShakeToRecord();
Lookback.disableShakeToRecord();
// etc.

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Monitoring
performance
and crashes

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NewRelic

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NewRelic
• A very complete Web and mobile monitoring solution
• Quite a standard since long on the Web side:
• introspect server traces
• compatible with many languages
• A mobile offer since last year
• And a Titanium module ❤

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App overview

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Network response time

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Howto
• enabling NewRelic is easy:
var newrelic = require('ti.newrelic');
newrelic.start(newrelicToken);
• caution, it crashes apps on iOS6-
var startNewRelic = function(newrelicToken) {
var version = Titanium.Platform.version.split(".");
var major = parseInt(version[0], 10);
if (!OS_IOS || major >= 7) {
var newrelic = require('ti.newrelic');
newrelic.start(newrelicToken);
}
};

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NewRelic
• A must-have for mobile-monitoring
• Several plans
• the free one is convenient if you do not need data retention
• building on Android is broken at the moment
• temporary-solution gistsaver:
https://gist.github.com/kennr/9698576

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Crittercism

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Crittercism
• A leader in the mobile app monitoring field
• Features:
• performance monitoring
• crashes collection
• data segmentation (geo / user / os / etc.)
• alerts
• realtime
• Free up to 30K monthly users (limited features)
• Included in Appcelerator Platform ("Performance Management")

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Crash

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Performance

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Alerts

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Few modules
• (android only) in.shivakumars.crittercism does not seem maintained
var crittercism = require("in.shivakumars.crittercism");
crittercism.initializeCrittercism({
apiKey : "HERE_YOUR_KEY",
includeVersionName : false,
includeVersionCode : false,
userName : "xavier"
});
• the "alloy crash test" app found on GitHub contains "com.crittercism.ti"
modules for iOS and Android. Not tested.

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Pricing
Basic Professional Pro Plus
Price Free $1200/year $6000/year
Crash details
Live graphs
Basic perf summary
Crash trends
Alerts
Geolocation
Data retention (perf / errors) 1 / 30 days 7 / 90 days unlimited
* Limited to 10K active users/month. Larger plans → Price increase

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Bugsense

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Bugsense
• Another big player in the mobile monitoring
• Features:
• crash analytics
• crash search / segmentation
• users churn and crashed correlation
• crashes trends
• Few Titanium modules available
• Bugsense module on Appcelerator Marketplace, by Droisys Inc.
Android Only

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Howto (android only)
• install the Bugsense module from the Marketplace
• enabling Bugsense is easy:
var bugsense = require('com.droisys.bugsense');
bugsense.setup(bugsenseKey);
• ... and it works:
[INFO] TiApplication: (main) [0,0] checkpoint, app created.
[INFO] TiApplication: (main) [79,79] Titanium 3.2.2 (2014/03/05 12:22 96e9a07
[INFO] TiRootActivity: (main) [0,0] checkpoint, on root activity create
[INFO] BugSenseHandler: Registering default exceptions handler
[INFO] homepage

4

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Monitoring
during the
development

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Fix and deliver fast
• Collect, identify and track crashes and bugs
• Fix it
• Deliver new versions
How to reduce the bug-report / new delivery process?
How to allow testers to be efficient?
• Testflight, HockeyApp, Installr
“

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Testflight

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• A widespread solution to deliver new versions
• Formerly iOS + Android, now iOS only
→ lost some of its usefulness for cross-platform apps

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HockeyApp

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• Features:
• crash report with server-side symbolication
• instant distribution
• feedback collection
• (simple) analytics
• Ti module available: https://github.com/Rebelcorp/HockeyApp
• no free plan. Starts at $100 / year

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Howto
• install the module: https://github.com/Rebelcorp/HockeyApp
• enable it (iOS + android):

nl.rebelic.hockeyapp
nl.rebelic.hockeyapp

• set up your account:
var hockeyapp = require('nl.rebelic.hockeyapp');
hockeyapp.start('');

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Installr

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• Focuses on beta App Distribution
• cross-platform
• sync devices and provisioning with Apple Developer Portal
• Prices depends on devices count (free up to 5 devices)

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Xavier Lacot
http://jolicode.com

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Monitor Your App: A complete panel of Titanium monitoring solutions

Monitor Your App: A complete panel of Titanium monitoring solutions

Xavier Lacot

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