Keeping with our theme of fast cats, this release is named after the Jaguar, which is the largest and fastest cat species native to the Americas. Jaguars are not only very fast, but also among the most powerful of the big cats. This combined with their extremely effective camouflage makes them a formidable ambush predator.
Read on to learn about all of the exciting updates running in with Jaguar!
Tracing - GA
We are excited to announce that Catchpoint Tracing is now Generally Available. Tracing provides end-to-end monitoring of distributed applications, capturing granular information on all the interactions between services and associated resources, such as databases, caches, queues, streams etc. This helps you to analyze resource usage, rapidly troubleshoot issues, and debug applications.
Enabling Tracing is easy and you can utilize points, allowing you to start using it immediately.
Capabilities include:
- Ability to troubleshoot errors and identify issues affecting the performance of tracing applications
- Ability to integrate Tracing with Synthetic tests to view traces of all transactions and troubleshoot errors in a test
- Ability to integrate tracing data from OpenTelemetry (OTEL) into Catchpoint Tracing applications
Contact your account team to schedule a demo and learn more about Tracing and watch for more tracing capabilities in upcoming releases!
Internet Sonar - Enhancements
Internet Sonar auto-discovers and detects outages for various third-party services that your applications/services rely on. Examples of third-party services include Internet Infrastructure (e.g. Cloud, CDN, DNS, ISP), SaaS applications, and Marketing technologies.
The prior release added network and ISP outage detection and updates from vendor/service status pages. This release includes enhancements to improve performance and make the overall user experience smoother and easier. These enhancements include:
- More services monitored, including Okta, Atlassian, Twilio, and many others.
- Expanded testing coverage for networks like last mile and wireless.
- Monitoring of internet infrastructure such as DNS resolvers, root servers, and TLD (Top Level Domain) servers.
- Performance improvements to make reporting Sonar data faster.
- Improved detection of ISP and Network outages.
Stack Map
Customer-facing digital services rely on a complex and layered set of services and applications throughout the Internet. Stack Map, which is included with Internet Sonar, enables you to visualize the health of your digital services and their dependencies, both internal and external. It helps you create custom topological maps of your services and layers, and incorporates data from your tests as well as outage data from Internet Sonar to keep you up to date on application health and performance, helping you quickly see the state of your stack.
In this release, we have added many more features and capabilities to Stack Map, including:
- Automatic population of the DNS Layer in the Create Wizard Flow
- Internet Sonar Outage data displayed in the Dashboard Timeline and right panel
- Alerts displayed in the right panel and Analyze blade
- Test Tab in Analyze Blade now shows raw test data unless a service filter is applied
- Ability to link System Services to Custom Services
- And many more UI and UX updates
Playwright (GA) and Puppeteer - Enhancements
Playwright and Puppeteer are cross-browser tools for advanced browser automation and testing. With Catchpoint's Playwright and Puppeteer test types, you can build multi-step transaction tests to capture the performance of a complete user journey on a website.
Dynamic Step Creation with StartStep Command
The startStep() command is enhanced to support dynamic step creation with a script. This can be used with any supported Playwright/Puppeteer command to create a new step. Previously, this was only supported with the goto() command. This extended support allows you to capture performance data for any interaction within a customer journey and then compare it against the benchmark performance data.
Debug Primary/Referenced Host on Failure
Playwright and Puppeteer now support an additional setting to automatically trigger debug test runs, which perform traceroute or DNS traversal tests in the event of failure. This option can be enabled to run when a failure occurs on the primary host or a referenced host.
Note: These changes are dependent on the latest Agent version, which will roll out to our public node infrastructure in stages during the weeks following the release.
Convert Test Types
We are pleased to introduce the ability to convert tests of web content from one type to another while retaining all test history. For example, you can now convert a Transaction Test to the new Playwright test type and still be able to track its historical performance seamlessly. You would just need to provide an updated script in the language of the chosen test type; all other settings common to both test types would be retained, as well as all historical data for the test.
The following test types support conversion:
- Web Test
- Transaction Test
- API Test
- Playwright Test
- Puppeteer Test
RUM NEL Configuration
Network Error Logging (NEL) is a feature of HTTP that allows for detecting network errors as they occur during user sessions. Catchpoint’s Real User Monitoring can use NEL reports to help identify patterns and trends in network errors, allowing for prompt troubleshooting and resolution. If your application uses a supported CDN, you can enable RUM NEL by including the predefined NEL configuration header from your Site Properties in the CDN’s outgoing response headers.
View Script in Smartboard and Records
In Smartboard and Records, when viewing a test with a multi-step script, you can now see the script to better understand what actions the metrics for a given step are representing. Just click the View Script button to open a blade showing the script.
WebPageTest Records Compare
Web Page Instant Test , which provides the functionality of webpagetest.org within the Catchpoint portal, now includes a Records Compare feature. This feature lets you compare results of up to four different tests, focusing on either Web Vital metrics or Site performance metrics, making it a convenient one-stop shop to review webpage performance in fine detail.
The comparison displays the filmstrip and waterfall of the selected runs, allowing you to identify any bottlenecks or areas where performance can be improved. For tests with multiple runs and multi-step scripted tests, the records compare feature also lets you select specific test runs or steps for comparison.
To use the Records Compare feature, you must select either a Site Performance test or a Scripted Test for comparison; Lighthouse tests are not supported for this feature.
API for Web Page Instant Test
The availability of REST API V2 for Web Page Instant Test opens up new possibilities for integrating Catchpoint’s analytics capabilities into various workflows and processes. With full access to the power of Catchpoint, developers and organizations can leverage this API to enhance their existing systems and gain valuable insights into website performance.
The REST API V2 endpoints for Web Page Instant Test allow you to retrieve detailed performance metrics, such as page load time, first contentful paint, and time to interact. These metrics can be invaluable for measuring and optimizing website performance, as they provide a comprehensive view of how a web page performs under different conditions.
REST API v2 Updates
- All endpoints now support Playwright and Puppeteer Tests
- Division ID is now an available parameter for the following endpoints, enabling a consumer to collect data for specific divisions only:
Credentials
Endpoint Device
Label
RUM Favorite Charts
Favorite Charts
Enterprise Light Support for Raspberry Pi
If you are responsible for monitoring networks and applications used inside stores, offices, hotels, restaurants, warehouses etc., you need a low-cost, lightweight solution that can be easily deployed in such environments. With this release, Enterprise Light supports ARM architectures and can be deployed on low-cost hardware such as Raspberry Pi.
This capability is available as a preview currently, and we welcome your feedback to help make improvements in future releases. To participate in the preview, please fill out this form.
Additional Features
- Insights – Tracepoints: Based on user requests, we have increased the character limit for Tracepoints from 32 to 255 characters.
- Usage Report: The Usage Report has been updated to pull data every hour rather than every 24 hours, to better align with the data reflected in the Account Activity Report.
- Traceroute + Pings: When Traceroute is used as an additional monitor, it will now run twenty additional pings to the destination IP to more accurately capture Jitter.
- ECN Status Filter in Explorer: Catchpoint traceroute monitor supports network congestion monitoring with ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification). ECN status is now available as filter in Explorer so that you can quickly filter specific ECN values.
- New Time Zone Added: Gulf Standard Time
Catchpoint Agent Release
Some of the features in the release (where noted) require the latest version of the Catchpoint Agent to be running on the selected Node. The Catchpoint Agent rollout involves two dimensions:
- Public Nodes managed by Catchpoint: Agent rollout on public nodes takes place in stages following each release. Agent release announcements are posted here: https://nodestatus.catchpoint.com.
- Private Enterprise Nodes managed by customers: Customers can upgrade Enterprise Nodes any time at their convenience. We advise customers to upgrade Enterprise nodes promptly after each release to benefit from the new feature functionality. Instructions for upgrading Enterprise nodes can be found here.