This page describes monitoring application change events.
When investigating an application error or poor performance, you may want to see whether any application changes occurred at the same time as the error or issue. AppDynamics automatically detects and reports common application change events, such as app server restarts or changes to application environment variables. You can supplement automatically detected change events with custom application change events generated through the Controller or the REST API.
Application changes appear alongside other events in the Events List. Similar to other types of events, you can view details for the event by double-clicking the event or view the details in the context of other performance indicators. They can also serve as triggering conditions for policies.
Manually Register Application Changes
You can manually add an application change event to AppDynamics. This capability enables you to log a change event which might otherwise not be detected by AppDynamics. Controller users can then correlate the event to performance data. For example, you may want to create an event when you push an updated version of the application.
Create an Application Change Event Manually
- From the Events page, expand the Actions menu and choose Register Application Change Event.
- In the Register Application Change dialog, configure the event. You can choose the type of event, the scope, and the time when the event should be registered.

- Click Register Application Change Event. If Now is selected as the change time, the event appears in the events list immediately.
- Double-click the event in the list to view more details about the event, including any actions triggered by the event as a result of a policy.
Automatically Register Application Changes
The AppDynamics REST API provides an alternative to creating application change events in the UI.
The API lets you automate event registration so that external systems can generate events based on their activities or conditions. For example, you can configure your release management system to generate an event in AppDynamics when it deploys an update to the application code, allowing you to correlate that event with application performance.
For information on creating a custom event through the REST API, see the Create a Custom Event method in AppDynamics APIs.
Correlate Application Changes with Other Events
You can view application changes in the context with other events and performance indicators in various Controller UI pages.
View Application Changes with Other Events in Transaction Score Histogram
- In the Application Dashboard, click the Transaction Score tab.
- Scroll down to the Events histogram.
- Click Add Criteria.
- From the dropdown, select Event Types.
- Unselect all of the criteria except Application Changes.
Application change events appear in the Events histogram, where they appear in the context of other performance indicators.