App Groups and App Score

ControlUp for Apps monitors web applications by grouping the URLs that belong to each application. These groups, called app groups, tell ControlUp for Apps which web activity to collect and where to show the data.

Create an app group for each web application you want to monitor. After data is collected, you can use ControlUp for Apps to review usage, performance, errors, and app group scores. This helps you understand how employees experience important applications and identify issues that might affect productivity.

This article explains how to create app groups, monitor browser home pages, and configure App Score settings.

App Groups

An app group tells ControlUp for Apps which URLs belong to the same web application. For example, you can create an app group for Microsoft 365 so ControlUp for Apps can monitor employees' Microsoft 365 web usage, performance, errors, and score data.

After you create an app group, ControlUp for Apps shows data for that application as employees use it. This helps you understand how employees experience the application and identify issues that might affect productivity.

In most cases, create one app group for each application and add one URL pattern. If an application uses more than one URL, add all relevant URL patterns to the same app group. For example, if your organization uses Salesforce, you can create one Salesforce app group that includes both *.salesforce.com and *.force.com.

You can ignore specific errors that you don't want to track or include in the app group score. Use this for known, non-critical errors that would otherwise skew the app group's data.

To create an app group for ControlUp for Apps:

1. Go to Settings > Employees > App Groups.
2. Click Add App Group.
3. Enter a Name and, optionally, a Description. The app group name appears in ControlUp for Apps.
4. Select URLs and add the URL patterns for the application.
5. Select Use with ControlUp for Apps.
6. Optionally, use Ignored Errors to select errors that you don't want to track or include in the app group score. This option is available only after you select Use with ControlUp for Apps.
7. Click Submit.

Monitor Browser Home Pages

To monitor a browser's home page, configure the ControlUp for Apps browser extension to reload the page after the extension starts. This is required because the home page can load before the browser extension starts monitoring page loads.

To set up page reload:

1. Go to Settings > ControlUp for Apps > Advanced.
2. Enable Reload page after extension initialization.
3. Click Add URL String and enter a URL string. A website is reloaded if its URL contains the string you enter. If the website URL is always the same, enter the full URL. If the website URL has a dynamic part, enter the static part of the URL. For example, if you enter controlup, then app.controlup.com and controlup.com both reload if they were opened before the browser extension was running.

You can add multiple URL strings.

This feature is not limited to browser home pages. It applies to any website that is already open when the browser extension starts.

App Score Settings

App group scores help you understand how employees experience the applications you monitor. ControlUp for Apps calculates these scores from performance and error data collected while employees use the applications.

Use App Score settings to define when that data should lower an app group score. The settings include three thresholds:

• Page load duration: The page load time, in seconds, after which the score is lowered.
• Time to first byte (TTFB): The response time, in seconds, after which the score is lowered if the browser has not received the first byte of the response.
• Page load errors: The number of page load errors after which the score is lowered.

The thresholds do not affect the score equally. Page load errors have the highest impact on the score, followed by TTFB. Page load duration has the lowest impact.

App Score thresholds apply to all app groups. If you filter an Apps page, ControlUp uses the same thresholds but calculates the displayed score from the app groups in the current view.

Use the ControlUp recommended values unless you have a specific reason to change how app group scores are calculated.

To configure App Score settings:

1. Go to Settings > Products > Applications > App Score.
2. Configure the App Score thresholds.
3. Optionally, click Reset to recommended values to restore the ControlUp recommended thresholds.
4. Click Save changes.