Explorer enables you to quickly perform detailed analysis of your Test and RUM data to discover the causes of performance issues. It enables you to create cross-dimensional visualizations of various metrics, such as slowest browsers by city, most visited pages by device type, or bounce rate by page by browser. By visualizing raw data over small periods of time, Explorer allows you to analyze the full captured data set*, practically in real time.
Real User Monitoring generates large amounts of raw data, which creates practical limitations when attempting to analyze results over longer timeframes. Depending on the size of the time range you attempt to visualize, Explorer may throttle the results to include just a sampling of the available data. When this occurs, it will be clearly indicated by a "Sampled Data" icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.
The timeframes available for analysis are limited by your site license's raw data retention policy. For example, accounts with Platinum licenses will be able to access raw data going back 30 days.
Explorer Interface
To access Explorer directly, select the Analysis module button 
in the Main Menu, and then select Explorer. You can also access Explorer from various other areas of the portal,
Favorites
At the top of the screen you will see the Favorites buttons.
You can add frequently-used Data Sources to the Favorites list by loading the desired Data Source and then clicking "Add to Favorites." You can then load any of your Favorites by clicking the "Favorites" button and making a selection.
Source
The first step is to select one or more Data Sources. You can do this by clicking the "Source" button, navigating the list of of your Tests and My Apps, and checking the boxes next to the desired data sources. You can also input the names of the desired sources in the Search field.
Once you have selected the desired data source(s), explorer charts the data using its default settings.
You can use the options to the left of the charts to change what data is displayed and how it is visualized. Read on for more information about the options available in each section.
Quick Charts
These are preset configurations that enable you to quickly view different combinations of related metrics. There are several pre-configured "System" Quick Charts, and you can also add your own custom Quick Charts.
System Quick Charts
- Components - includes metrics related to the major components impacting overall Test Time, included DNS (ms), Connect (ms), SSL (ms), and others.
- DNS - displays DNS (ms) and Base Response (ms).
- Network - displays metrics specific to Network performance, such as Connect (ms) and Ping statistics.
- Response - focuses specifically on response times, including Base, Server, and Test Response times.
- Web Page - includes metrics related to the performance of Web Pages, such as DOM Load (ms), Render Start (ms), % Content Availability, etc.
Custom Quick Charts
You can create your own custom quick charts by selecting "Add Charts." This displays the New Quick Chart blade on the right.
Select one or more Metrics to display in this Quick Chart, input a name for it, and select which Test Types it applies to, then click Save. You can then select this Quick Chart from the Quick Charts menu under "Custom."
Timeframe
Use the Timeframe options to change the time period that the charts pull data from, and the time interval used to aggregate results when plotting the data (e.g. if you are charting Avg. Test Time (ms) with a time Interval of 15 minutes, then all Test Time readings within each 15 interval will be averaged to generate each point on the graph.)
Sampling (RUM Only)
When viewing RUM data in Explorer, the data will be sampled when you choose a timeframe that includes a large number of page views. This helps reduce unnecessary consumption of processing resources and improves the performance of the Explorer interface. If you need Explorer to chart data from all available page views regardless of processing time, select the "Avoid Sampling" checkbox.
Visualizations
By default, Explorer displays data from the selected source and timeframe in Line Charts. You can choose other visualizations in this section by selecting the desired icon.
Line Chart - plots a line representing the selected metric with time on the X-axis. Data is aggregated using the selected Metric Calculation and Time Interval.
Scatterplot - plots each data point as an individual dot on the timeline.
Bar Chart - aggregates all data points for each selected data source and metric and displays a vertical bar representing the calculated value.
CDF (Cumulative Distribution Function) - plots a line representing the value at each percentile from 1 to 100.
Histogram - displays vertical bars representing the number of readings in the data set that fall within each value range.
Heatmap - displays rectangles whose fluorescence represents the number of readings that fall into a particular value range at a given time.
Table - a simple table displaying each data point.
Dimensions and Breakdowns
This section enables to see how different factors relate to each other and affect system performance.
Dimensions
The dimension setting determines what the visualization's X-axis represents. In the case of Time Charts and Scatterplots, the X-axis always represents Time, so the Dimension setting cannot be changed. Similarly, a CDF's X-axis always represents Percentiles, and a Histogram's always represent discrete ranges of metric values.
Bar Charts and Heatmaps do allow you to select a Dimension. For example, if you view Web Test data in a Bar Chart and select "City" as the Dimension, then data for each City would be represented by its own vertical Bar. If you were to switch the Dimension to "Hour of Day" then each vertical bar would represent data from a different hour.
When viewing a Table, you can select up to 10 dimensions, each of which will be represented as an additional column in the table breaking down the data further.
Column By
If you choose a Column By setting, then Explorer will draw multiple charts, each containing data related to a different value of the selected option. For example, if you choose to column by "Day of Week," then Explorer will draw a separate chart for each day.
Breakdown By
This setting determines how data is broken down within each chart. For example, you could view a Time Chart representing a web page's Connection Time and choose ISP as the "Breakdown By" option. The chart would plot a separate line representing each ISP, enabling you to compare their performance.
Metrics
To understand the metrics the Catchpoint collects, read this article.
The following sections enable you to choose exactly which data to represent in your chart(s). When you choose a metric, its "Pill" will be displayed in the list. If you see the default calculation ("Avg") in the Pill, then you can click it to select another calculation.
If the selected Data Source is a test, then these sections will include:
- Test Data: displays metrics for the overall performance of the test.
- Request Data displays metrics for specific requests generated by the test
- Host Data: lets you choose host-specific metrics and filter the data by individual hosts. Available for tests which capture the specific host that responded to each request.
- Zone Data: Zones are essentially groupings of Hosts that are controlled/managed by different organizations. They are typically used to distinguish hosts that you manage (Self) from hosts that are outside your control (3rd Party). This section lets you choose Zone-specific metrics and filter the data by Zone.
- Index Data: Indexes let you combine data from multiple tests into a single measure. This section lets you choose Index-specific data and filter by Index.
If the selected Data Source is a My App, then the metric sections will include:
- App Data: the standard metrics captured by each My App.
- Ajax Data: metrics related to Ajax (asynchronous Javascript and XML) calls made by the site.
- Provider Data: metrics broken down by the My App provider (as configured in the portal)
- Zone Data: Zones are essentially groupings of Hosts that are controlled/managed by different organizations. They are typically used to distinguish hosts that you manage (Self) from hosts that are outside your control (3rd Party). This section lets you choose Zone-specific metrics and filter the data by Zone.
Availability Filter (Tests Only)
This section provides options for filtering your data based on the availability of the application being tested. You can choose such filters as Successes Only, Failures Only, Only Content Failures, and Only JS Errors.
You can also choose to filter based on its SLA Classification, so you can include/exclude data that has been purged.