VSI App New User Plan

Getting started learning path for new App users.

Updated 2026-08-03 dpi, getting started, new user, learn

VSI App provides an easy-to-use interface and an advanced feature set that empowers industry-leading application performance analysis for both native and web applications.

App performance data with real-time, real-user experience monitoring connects app front-end experiences with backend network service performance to monitor and track Service Level Objectives (SLOs), such as engagement metrics, QoE measurements and KPI metrics, service performance metrics, and error messages. Specific data points help provide Service Level Indicators (SLIs) for critical user journey success rates and requried quality of experience levels. User timelines record user interactions for detailed activity summaries and deep understanding of how application performance and network service health impacted specific user experiences.

Getting started with App is straightforward. After integrating with low-code sensor integration, access the out-of-the-box metrics and metadata to monitor application performance metrics and explore dimensional attributes across your web and native application data.

Summary of what you can do:

Metric Builder also enables the flow creation to specify user journey details, such as starting and completion events to easily create the related metrics, such as flow duration and success rate. For more details, check Metric Builder.

Sensor Integration

Perform low-code integration of DPI Sensor to enable automatic, and semantic-less data collection.

Sensor Integration Feature

Perform These Tasks: App Sensors

VSI App integration workflow, for example, for Android:

  1. Configure Gradle dependency.

  2. Initialize the tracker so that it auto-collects events, tracks application specific events, and disables event caching.

  3. Set the user id (viewer id).

  4. (Optional) Track application specific events and state changes.

For platform-specific app sensor integration instructions, refer to:

Intellect Data Collection with Remote Configuration

Perform remote data collection updates to dynamically update the sensor data collection without complicated sensor rework.

Block Event allows you to efficiently restrict event reporting to limit ingest to the most relevant and meaningful events from the sensor, ensuring the accuracy and relevancy of your experience-centric data.

The Configure Network Request tab allows you to set collection rules for conviva_network_request events. When the rules are configured, the Conviva sensor collects events that match these rules. You can then select the collected events as raw data for mapping and metric building. The Management tab also displays all configured collection rules for review and update.

Blocking and Configuring

Blocking Events

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. To access the Block Event page, click Block Events under the Sensor Remote Control tab.

  2. Click an event name under the Custom Event column to see details of the block events.

  3. Click Edit in the event details section.

  4. To modify block rules, choose one of the options based on your requirements.

  • To block all the events, select Block All.

  • To block the specific, select Block if…, and fill out the key values that the specific event owns. You can add multiple block rules for different specific events by clicking Add OR Rule. For example, if you want to block the conviva_network_request event that triggered when loading images, select Block if…, and fill out the key values as .png, .jepg, and .jpg.

  1. To apply the block rules that you set, click Save Changes.

Learn more: Sensor Remote Control

Configuring Network Request

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. To begin creating rules, click Add New on the left side.

  2. To set rules, fill out the fields in the right pane.

  3. Click Save. The Conviva sensor collects the conviva_network_request events that match the rules.

Learn more: Sensor Remote Control

The Trends dashboard provides an easy-to-use interface with an advanced feature set that enables application performance monitoring and user behavior analysis within your applications.

Using out-of-box Metrics to Perform App Analysis

Conviva provides a set of out-of-box metrics, such as App Crashes, and Avg Screen Load Time, to help you quickly access application performance monitoring and user behavior analysis across your web and native applications. Using these metrics, view metric time series in the Trends metric widgets to discover time series performance patterns and anomalies. Also, in Trends drill-down across dimensional values in the dimension drill-down tables to discover impacts and root causes.

For the detailed definitions of out-of-box metrics, check App Metrics.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:
  1. On the Trends page, select the time range, such as Last 24 hours, and select metrics based on your requirements. For example, selecting Avg App Startup Time, Avg Network Request Duration, Active Users, Screen Loads, Avg Screen Load Time, and App Crashes to analyze the app performance and user experience.
2. Check the metric widget time series and distributions for data insights and performance. Select and slice the data to drill down specific anomalies.
  1. To get more comprehensive data, click a widget you want to know more about, and check the dimension table. For example, clicking the Avg Network Request Duration widget. Based on your requirements, check the different dimension tables under the different tabs.

  • Trends: displays the readings as per the applied primary and secondary filters. This helps you to analyze the data and check the anomalies if any.

  • Users: provides events and data, such as user ID, app name, country, and city, related to user activities. Click a client ID or a user ID to go to the user timeline for comprehensive and granular analysis of a session.

  • Network Request: displays network request-related data in a tree map format or table format. It helps you analyze the app performance and guide to enhance user experience.

Learn more: App Trends

Enable to create user defined metrics directly in VSI App.

Using Presets

Offer pre-defined features as quick starting points for commonly used metrics and metadata use cases:

  • User Experience

  • Server Side Performance

  • Events

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. Click Presets on the App.

  2. Select a preset use case from the displayed list.

  3. Check the preset page.

Learn more: Preset

Performing Drill-down Analysis

Use drill-down analysis to effectively analyze app issues, identify error messages, and gain insights into user behavior.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. Check metrics from the DPI dashboard.

  2. Explore dimensional data from the Dimension table.

  3. Deepen analysis with user timeline.

Learn more: Performing Drill-Down Analysis

Event Discovery

Conviva LiveLens, Paths and Funnels enable event discovery as an important precursor to the development of meaningful and actionable metrics. These dashboards or tabs help identify and analyze key event flows essential for metric creation, such as network request response codes and UI element names.

  • LiveLens: Shows a real-time list of the event names and tags as they occur while using your application. With this feature, monitor the event flows (initial and follow up events) for application activities to discover and confirm the event mappings for building metrics.

  • Paths: Visually shows the pattern of events in sequential path flows. This dashboard helps you understand the sequence and composition of events, providing insights for metric creation and potential issue identification.

  • Funnels: Visually tracks conversion rates across key event progress for selected dimensions. This dashboard helps you understand each step in conversion rates, such as from starting the login process to login success, and highlights potential conversion blocks.

Event Discovery Features

Exploring Events in Real Time

Perform These Tasks: View Image:
  1. Access the demo website and perform online actions, such as selecting and purchasing food.
This Conviva demo website simulates the processes and user behaviors for online food ordering.
  1. From the App menu, click Activation, then click the LiveLens tab on the Activation page to access the LiveLens page.
  1. By default, the Find Myself By IP Address option and the current IP address are automatically selected.

If you follow the recommendation in step 2 to use the same network for the demo website and VSI App, click Find to continue.

If not, use the search engine on the device that opens the demo website to find the IP address, enter the IP address, and then click Find to continue.
  1. From the pop-up table, locate your client ID and click the client ID to open the Real-time Timeline area.
5. Explore the events in the Real-time Timeline area and related event details.

The Real-time Timeline area shows follow-up events after clicking the Purchase button on the demo website.

Expand the purchase events to view the details.
  1. From the Real-time Timeline area, identify the required messages to map two purchase events for creating a metric that measures the purchase processing duration:

  • Mapped event name: Payment Start Event

  • Event Name: purchase

  • Tag Key: status

  • Tag Value: start

  • Mapped event name: Payment Success Event

  • Event Name: purchase

  • Tag Key: status

  • Tag Value: success

For more details on how to map events and use complex event combinations to create metrics, check Semantic Mapper and Metric Builder.

Check Event Sequence and Conversation Rate

  1. Click Paths in the App main menu.
  1. In the pop-up window, fill out the fields with the time range, global filter, view paths (starting with or ending with), click Generate Paths to display paths for the configured settings. In this example, discover the events following visiting the login page on the web player app.

App Name: Web Player

Starting with Event: Login Page View
  1. Review the created Paths to discover events.

From the created paths, you can identify several events appearing after visiting the login page, such as Login Request, Bad Event, Register Page View, conviva_page_view, and Unsuccessful Login.

The Login Page View and Unsuccessful Login events can be used to create a login failure metric for tracking the conversion rate from the starting login process to unsuccessful login.
  1. To check the conversion rate from the starting login process to unsuccessful login, select the Login Page View and Unsuccessful Login events.

From the funnel diagram, determine if the conversion rate shows sufficient activity to support the metric creation. In this case, 11.32% is substantial.
5. Click View Funnel and the Funnel dashboard opens automatically.
6. To track specific data conversion, set the breakdown event. For example, to check the conversion rate in different browsers, select Browser name from the drop-down list and choose specific browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.
  1. Review the detailed conversion rate for different browsers.

With these steps, using the Login Page View and Unsuccessful Login events for a login conversion rate metric provides significant login insights.

Activating Data

App data activation enables you to map new events and create metrics to efficiently explore and manage the current application events for enhanced insights and do data analysis for more complex scenarios.

Activation Features

Mapping New Event

  • Map events as App trend drill-down entities to enable deeper analysis using dimensional drill-down.

  • Map events to create customized metrics.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. Click Map New Event under the Semantic Mapper tab on the Activation page from VSI App.

  2. Specify the event name along with the tag key and tag value that consist of the mapped event.

  3. Select a suitable category, type the event name in the Set Mapped Event field, and then click Save.

  4. Click Deploy from the top right corner.

Learn more: App Activation

Creating Flow Metrics

VSI App enables flow metrics that reflect user journeys, supporting performance monitoring and measurement of critical application actions to optimize app outcomes and user experience.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:
  1. Click + New Metric and select Create Flow to create flow-based metrics.
  1. Enter the flow name in the Flow Name field.
3. (Optional) Provide the Flow description and select or create a labels to clarify the Flow use in the UI.
  1. Select events that signal the start and end of a user flow.
5. Set experience and performance settings.
  1. Define flow details, such as time constraint, distribution range, and rating limits.
  1. Click Save and Deploy to complete the deployment. Use the flow metrics on Trends.

Learn more: Flows

Building Custom Metrics

Customize metrics to analyze data for complex scenarios, such as analyzing the login process time.

Perform These Tasks: View Video:
1.Confirm mapped event(s) are available. If they are not, map event(s).
  1. Use Metric Builder to assign mapped events to the new metric, define the metric details, and click Save and Deploy to complete the deployment.

  1. Display the new metric in VSI App.

  2. Navigate to the Trends page by clicking Trends from the App main left menu.

  3. Click + Metric and from the Custom Metrics list, select the desired metric.

  4. View the metric in the Trends dashboard and other App pages.

Learn more: Custom Metrics

Setting Collection Rules for Network Requests

Set collection rules for _conviva_network_reques_t events. When the rules are configured, the Conviva sensor will collect events that match these rules. You can then select the collected events as raw data for mapping if necessary.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. To begin creating rules, click Add New.

  2. To set rules, fill out the fields in the right pane.

  3. Click Save. The Conviva sensor will collect the conviva_network_request events that match the rules.

Learn more: Configure Network Request

Managing Data

The Management tab allows you to effectively manage data, including tasks such as searching, reviewing, and deploying/undeploying specific mapped events and metrics to support your performance monitoring goals.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

  1. From the App menu, click Activation, and then click the Management tab.

  2. From the Management page, select an item that you want to manage, such as Metrics.

  3. In the table, locate the item you want to manage, and manage it according to your requirements, such as editing, deleting, or cloning.

Learn more: Management

Viewing User Timeline

Drill down into session timelines for comprehensive and granular analysis of a session.

User Timeline Feature

Perform These Tasks: View Image:

Access the user timeline for impacted viewers or by user id.

  • From the drill-down tables, select users tab to show the users impacted by the selected performance metric. Click the user name to go to the user timeline.

  • Click the User Timeline menu to access the user timeline page for specific user id.

Learn more: User Timeline

AI Alert

AI alerts is an advanced feature that eliminates the need to determine the sensitivity, identify the relevant dimensions that you need to monitor, and set manual alerts to notify related individuals and groups.

App also enables you to integrate manual alerts and AI alerts with PagerDuty, enhancing Conviva's advanced App alerts with PagerDuty escalation management and notifications.

  • AI Alert

  • Setting Webhook Notifications

  • Conviva PagerDuty Integration Guide for App

Using Custom Dashboards

Enable the combination of widgets and display options to highlight the insights that are most meaningful to your users and business.

Custom Dashboards Feature

Perform These Tasks: View Image:
  1. Click + New Dashboard, and select one or more data sources based on your requirements.

  • To use only app data, select Single Data Source and choose App from the Data Source list.

  • To use app data along with other types, such as VIDEO or AD, select Multiple Data Sources and choose VSI App and other required data sources, such as VIDEO, from the Data Source list.

  1. In the edit mode, select the time range, and click New Widget.

  2. Fill out all required items, and click OK.

  3. Check the created dashboard.

  4. For complex analysis across different data displays, add more widgets following the same process.

Learn more: Custom Dashboards

Custom Metric Creation Use Cases

These use cases provide a hands-on way for you to quickly implement custom metrics using Metric Builder and other App features. The custom metrics in the use cases are commonly used for analyzing the application performance and user experience.

Use Cases

Full Sign-Up Time

The custom metric Full Registration Time measures the time from starting the registration or sign-up process until the registration is complete. This metric enables you to do analysis of registration process and identify whether the process is cumbersome.

Perform These Tasks: View Image:
  1. Confirm mapped event(s) are available. If they are not, map event(s).

  • A mapped event that shows a user clicking a link, button, or loading a page to start the registration process. In the use case, the mapped event is Start_Registration.

  • A mapped event that shows the page load immediately following a successful registration. In the use case, the mapped event is Start_Registration.
  1. Use Metric Builder to assign mapped events to the new metric, define the metric details, and click Save and Deploy to complete the deployment.

  1. Display the new metric in VSI App.

  2. Navigate to the Trends page by clicking Trends from the App main left menu.

  3. Click + Metric and from the Custom Metrics list, select the Full Registration Time metric.

  4. View the metric in the Trends dashboard and other App pages.

Full Login Time Monitoring

The custom metric Full Login Time measures the time taken for the entire login process, including the loading of the login form/page, user input of their username and password, form submission, and the subsequent loading of the page users are redirected to upon login. This metric is essential for analyzing application performance and identifying the root causes of slow login times.

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. Confirm mapped event(s) are available. If they are not, map event(s).

  • A mapped event that shows either the button click event to load the login form/page or the page load event for the page containing the login form. In the use case, the mapped event is Login_Click.

  • A mapped event that shows the page load event that occurs immediately after a successful login. In the use case, the mapped event is Load_Home_Menu.
  1. Use Metric Builder to assign mapped events to the new metric, define the metric details, and click Save and Deploy to complete the deployment.

  1. Display the new metric in VSI App.

  2. Navigate to the Trends page by clicking Trends from the App main left menu.

  3. Click + Metric and from the Custom Metrics list, select the Full Login Time metric.

  4. View the metric in the Trends dashboard and other App pages.

Monitor Critical User Journeys

In App, configure flows to monitor user experience progress and success levels during critical app and web user journeys, such as login completion, PDP search to purchase, and checkout processing.

App flows represent critical steps in real-user journeys that enable continuous monitoring and step-wise activity progress in real-time, measuring critical user journey durations, success rates, and completions. For continuous diagnostics within Flow activities, VSI App generates AI-based alerts on progress and completion anomalies to diagnose and optimize user digital experiences.

Use Flow success rates, anomaly detection, error rates, and duration tracking to quickly point toward root cause fixes and digital experience improvements. With OpenTelemetry-compatible tracing, Flows can connect front-end app experiences directly with backend server performance. For more detal, see Flows.

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. In App Activation, selelct Create Flows.

  • Add the flow name and description

  • Select the start and complete events that define the flow starting and ending points. Use the event mapping tools to map any required events.
  1. Configure the successful Flow parameters, such as the success duration during which the Flows needs to complete to be considered successful, and the percentage of successful flow completions aggregated across all flows to classify the flow as poor, fair, or good performance.

Also, set the range of data buckets in the distrbution.
  1. Deploy the Flow to display the Flow widget in Trends and generate Flow AI alerts to automatically track Flow progress and completion anomalies for optimized user digital experiences.

Examples of Flows:

  • Login Process starting with login button click event and completing with home page display event.

  • Checkout Process starting with add to cart event and completing with payment processed event.

  • Subscription Signup Process starting with signup button click event and completing with the network request success response code event.

Diagnose Performance Issues Impacting User Experiences

VSI App provides features for deep drill-down cross-dimensional analysis for easy analysis across dimensions, such as device model, application version, and error messages, for real-time and historical data, isolating service performance and real-user experience for deep insights into impacted user experiences.

Dimensional Data Drill-Downs

Select up to eight dimensions enabling advanced analysis across dimension tables for deep data drill-downs. Clicking dimension values in dimension tables provides advanced analysis across dimensional value combinations, such as Apple TV 4k, app version 5.6.2 and user ID 2163548, for flexible impact and combined data analysis. For more details on App app performance monitoring and connecting performance data with real-time user experiences, see Trends.

Event Sequences in User Experience

Use the Paths dashboard to create a Paths chart that visualizes the sequential pattern of user events based on a starting event and subsequent filtered events, highlighting the sequence of events and the composition of events for metric creation and potential issue identification.

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. In App menu, selelct Trends.

  • Use the Date Picker to select the desired interval.

  • Add the related metrics and dimensions.
  1. In the Summary and Analysis tabs, analyze metric widget time series to highlight anomalies, slice on performance spikes, and drill-down across dimensions to isolate root causes.
  1. In the Users tab, highlight the time series spike or anomaly and analyze the details, including links to user timelines, for up to 1500 impacted users.

User timelines provide a detailed list of user events and event data, such as network request paths and response codes, page titles, and payment type.
  1. In the Network Requests tab, highlight the time series spike or anomaly and analyze the relate network request performance details for up to 1000 request.

In a metric widget distribution, for example Network Request Average Duration, select the impact range and turn on RCA Mode to view the auto-generated root cause hypothesis with related network API call data.
  1. Increase the time interval to 30 days or greater to baseline user experiences, such as % of purchase complete errors over the interval, and establish user experience benchmarks.

Monitor User Experience Metrics During Software Releases to Confirm Release Quality

With App, easily monitor software releases and compare version performance to bench release adoption and mitigate new release issues. With the Application Version dimension displayed in the dimension tables, click the quick compare icon to display a comparison view of the top 10 releases.

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. In App Trends, add dimensions for App Name and App Version.

  • Use the Metrics selection to add release performance metrics.

  • Select the app to track release performance.

  • In the App Version dimension table, select the Compare to filters icon under the dimension name. This displays the Compare Filters window with the top 10 release data.
  1. Click the Filter icon at the right of a version row to displays Trends analysis with a filtered applied for that version.

Also, filter on a version to view the metrics across dimensions, such as browser versions.

Monitor and Alert on API Performance

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. In App Trends, select the Endpoints dimension.

Set the display options to show AI alerts in the time series widgets.

  1. Click an AI alert marker in a time series to launch the alert diagnostics.

Track Application Service Levels and Performance Indicators

Perform These Tasks: View preview image:
  1. App Trends dashboard displays the metrics related to the performance and service levels.

  • Default metrics are available for common performance criteria, such as page load times, app crashes, and web errors.

  • Use the Semantic Mapper and Metric Builder to create custom metrics, such as Add Item to Cart Payment Success based on service level durations.
  1. In Trends, analyze metric performance time series and set AI alerts for automatic notification when service level thresholds are reached. Alert markers appear in the time series for proactive response.