Configure Page Identification and Naming

You can configure the display names by which various pages and iframes are referred to and sorted in Controller lists and dashboards. On this page, the term "pages" includes iframes and base pages.

With rules, you can:

• Use the AppDynamics default naming rule, which you can leave as is or modify.
• Create custom include rules to override the default convention.
• Create custom exclude rules to exclude from monitoring pages that meet certain criteria.
• Disable the default naming configuration and use only your custom include rule(s).

No matter how the page is named, AppDynamics always reports the page name in lowercase.

Access Exclude/Include Rules

1. In the Controller, click the User Experience tab.

2. Click a browser application.

3. On the left navigation bar, click Configuration.

4. Click Instrumentation >.

5. From the Base Page and iFrames tab, define include/exclude rules or modify the Default Naming Configuration.
6. To save any configuration changes, click Save.

Evaluation Logic for Exclude/Include Rules 

This is the order in which AppDynamics evaluates the page naming rules.

Default Page Naming Rules

If you enable the default naming configuration and do not modify it, AppDynamics identifies and names your pages using the first two segments of the page URL.

You can modify the default configuration by double-clicking Default Naming Configuration in the Include Rules section. This opens the Include Rule popup, where you can select the dropdown list using parts of the URL to include the protocol or domain in the name, use different segments of the URL, or include query parameters or anchors in the name.  

You can also choose the dropdown using a Regex match on the URL to match page names by running a regular expression.

If you do not want to use the default convention at all, disable it by clearing the Enabled checkbox. In this case, you must configure at least one custom page naming rule so that AppDynamics can identify and name pages.

Custom Include Rules

You can create custom include rules for identifying and naming pages. 

To create a custom include naming rule, from the Include Rules section, click Add. Then you use the same Include Rule popup to configure the custom include rule to identify and name the page.

The order of the include rules in the list determines the priority of the rules: The rules at the top are evaluated first, and the rules at the bottom are evaluated last. You cannot change the priority of Default Naming Configuration, but you can modify or disable it.

Guidelines for Using Regular Expressions in Include Rules

When using regular expressions to match URLs in your include rules, note the following guidelines:

• URL strings are case-sensitive. So, although the page names displayed in Pages & Ajax Requests are converted to lowercase, your regular expressions still need to match the case used in URLs that your include rule are trying to capture.
• Your regular expression should match the entire URL, from beginning to end, not just a section; otherwise, the rule will not match. This differs from using regular expressions in custom match rules for naming transactions, which only need to match sections of the URL.
• Beacons for older browsers (primarily Internet Explorer 6-8) are sent using image requests, and therefore, have an inherent length limitation. To manage this limitation, Browser RUM does not support URLs longer than 180 characters, page names longer than 50 characters, and user data longer than 128 characters for these browsers.

Limitations

• If you are using the regex expression "and use groups" to group pages by a custom page name (i.e. you want the page /my-business/checkout to display as /checkout/my-business), the regex logic defaults to ascending order of the groups. For example, the regex expression "and use groups = 3,2" will default to "use groups = 2,3". 

Example Include Rule

Suppose you have multiple pages that include the string search/r/region in their URLs, such as search/r/region01, search/r/region23, etc., and you want to name all the pages from that set as a single-page named search/r/region. By selecting the dropdown using a Regex match on the URL, you can enter a regular expression to remove the domain name and the number at the end of the URL, grouping all your /search/r/region URLs into one set. Because all the URLs contain search/r/region, AppDynamics now collects information for them all under the single-page name search/r/region. Otherwise, AppDynamics uses the default page naming rule or a rule with higher priority.

Custom Page Exclude Rules

You can configure custom exclude rules for pages in the same way you configure include rules. Any page with a URL matching the configuration is excluded from monitoring.