Displaying Business Transactions in a List
AppDynamics displays all business transactions for a single business application on the Business Transactions List. The configurable list shows the key performance indicators (KPIs) for the business transactions during the configured time range.
To access the Business Transactions List
1. From the left navigation pane, select a business application.
2. Under the application name click Business Transactions.
The list shows all the transactions for a business application with configurable columns that display performance data.
Click a column to sort the business transactions based on the data in that particular column.
To access a dashboard for a specific business transaction, select the business transaction and click View Dashboard. See Business Transaction Dashboard.
Sometimes you see an "All Other Traffic" business transaction on a tier. For details about what this is and how to handle it see All Other Traffic Business Transaction.
Performance metrics are relevant for the configured time range.
- Health: Red, yellow, or green icons corresponding to the health rule settings for the business transaction. Click the icon to get more information. See Default Health Rules.
Standard KPIs
- Server Time: Average response time (ART) spent processing the business transaction, for all instances of the business transaction, from start to end of the entry point invocation.
- Max Time: Longest time spent processing an instance.
- Min Time: Shortest time spent processing an instance.
- Calls: Call volume, the total number of invocations of the entry point for the business transaction (all instances).
- Calls/min: Average number of instances per minute.
- Errors: Number of errors over all instances. See Configure Error Detection.
- Error %: Percentage of instances that are errors.
Slow and Stalled Calls
- Slow Transactions: The number of instances that meet the criteria defined for a slow transaction.
- Very Slow Transactions: Number of instances that meet the criteria defined for a very slow transaction.
- Stalled Transactions: Number of instances that meet the criteria defined for a stalled transaction.
Criteria for slow and stalled transaction performance is determined by thresholds. See Configure Thresholds.
CPU Usage
CPU usage metrics are available when either a standalone machine agent or embedded machine agent is installed on the node's machine.
- CPU Used (ms): Average time spent using the CPU. An invocation might wait or be blocked when it is not using the CPU.
- Block Time (ms): Average time spent when invocations are blocked for thread synchronization and locks.
- Wait Time (ms): Average time spent when invocations are in a thread sleep or wait state.
Other
- Tier: Display name of the originating tier for the business transaction.
- Type: Type of entry point. The types that are listed depends on the app agent (Java, .NET, PHP, etc.).
1. Select View Options to configure which performance data is displayed in the list.
2. Check the metrics you want to see in the list. The Health column always displays.
Filtering the Business Transaction List
You can filter the display of business transactions based on different criteria such as:
- Transactions with Performance Data: By default the list displays only business transactions that have performance data. Uncheck this option to list all defined business transactions.
- Average Response Time: Filter the list based on greater than an average response time in milliseconds.
- Calls / min: Filter based on a greater than average number of instances/minute.
- Groups: Show only business transaction groups.
- Transaction Type: Filter transactions based on entry point types. The types that are listed depends on the app agent (Java, .NET, PHP, etc.).
- User Transactions: List only regular business transactions (not background task transactions).
- Background Tasks: List only background tasks.
- Tier: List all business transactions for a particular tier.
- Transaction Name: List according to a comma-separated list of transaction names.
To filter the Business Transactions List
1. Click Filters On next to the Search box in the upper right corner of the list to toggle the toolbar.
2. In the toolbar, check the criteria that define the business transactions to display.
Business Transactions List Operations
Select a particular business transaction and right-click, or click More Actions. You can perform following operation on the selected business transaction.
Monitor
- View Metrics by Individual Nodes: See metrics by node in the tier in which the business transaction started. You can view the metrics in the Node Dashboard or the Metric Browser.
Troubleshoot
- View Health Rule Violations: View all the health rule violations for the selected transaction in the time range.
- Start Diagnostic Session: Manually start a diagnostic session on the selected transaction. By default diagnostic sessions are triggered only when an instance experiences problems or violates health rule thresholds.
Analyze
- Analyze Response Time vs Load Time: Opens the Scalability Analysis window where you can compare average response time versus calls (instances) per minute for a business transaction.
Report
- Export Grid Data: Export the data displayed on the grid and save it in a file.
- Configure Thresholds: Configure thresholds for the selected business transaction.
- Configure Data Collectors: Configure data collectors for the selected business transaction.
Other
- Delete: You can delete the selected transaction from the list. However, it will be added back to the Business Transactions List if it is discovered again by AppDynamics. To stop a business transaction from being monitored at all, use Exclude Transactions.
Tip: Delete is useful when you create a new custom match rule that will replace detection of existing business transactions. You delete the business transactions discovered by the old rule and new transactions are discovered by the new rule. For example, if you have three business transactions named BT_A, BT_B, and BT_C and you create a custom match rule to discover them as a single business transaction BT_ABC, you would delete the old transactions so that they no longer count towards the business transaction limit.
- Exclude Transactions: Remove the selected transaction or transactions from the Business Transactions List. AppDynamics retains the accumulated metrics, but stops monitoring the transaction. Excluded transactions are not counted against the business transaction limits.
Tip: Excluding transactions from the UI is helpful if you think you may want to resume monitoring the transaction in the future, as the underlying configuration is still present. To change the configuration itself see Configure Business Transaction Detection#Exclude Rules.
- View Excluded Transactions: View transactions that were excluded from the Business Transactions List and resume monitoring them if needed.
- Set as Background Task: The transaction will be treated as a background task and its metrics will not be counted with the application or tier business transaction metrics.
Tip: Average response time and calls per minute for background tasks are typically much different than those for business transactions based on user requests. For example average response time could be very high for a large batch processing job. It is important to monitor background task metrics separately so as not to skew the metrics that are based on user requests. See Background Task Monitoring.
- Create Group: Gather different business transactions into a single logical group.
- Delete Group: Delete a group. This does not delete the business transactions in the group.
Exclude Versus Delete
The differences between excluding and deleting from the Business Transaction List are:
Deleting a Business Transaction
- Removes the accumulated metrics for the transaction
- Unless you change the discovery rules, a business transaction that has been deleted will be discovered again (when the corresponding function in the application is used) and the transaction will simply reappear.
Excluding a Business Transaction (using the UI features)
- Retains the accumulated metrics
- Exclude is reversible because the transaction is still persistent in the Controller database. You can un-exclude it and start monitoring it again.
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