Configure Page Identification and Naming

You can configure the display names by which various pages, Ajax requests, and iframes are referred to and sorted in controller lists and dashboards.

You can:

• use the AppDynamics default naming rule, which you can leave as is or modify.
• create custom naming rules to override the default convention.
• disable the default naming rule and use only your own custom naming rules.
• create custom exclude rules to exclude from monitoring pages that meet certain criteria.

 In this topic, the term "pages" includes iframes, Ajax requests, and base pages.

No matter how the page is named, AppDynamics always reports the page name in lower-case.

Access Page Naming Rules

1. Open the EUM application in which you are interested.

2. On the left navigation bar, click Configuration.

3. Select the Web Page Naming, Error Detection, Thresholds, Percentiles, etc tab.
4. Expand Configure how Pages, AJAX Requests, and Iframes will be named.

Whenever you make any changes, click Save to save the configuration.

Logic of Page Naming Rule Evaluation

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

Use the Default Page Naming Configuration Rule

If you enable the default naming configuration and do not modify it, AppDynamics identifies and names your pages using the first 2 segments of the page URL.
 The domain name itself is not a URL "segment", so to show only the domain name, select Don't use the URL.

Modify the Default Page Configuration Naming Rule

You can modify the default configuration in the Default Naming Configuration section.  For example, you can include the protocol or domain in the name, or use different segments of the URL, or run a regular expression on the URL, or include query parameters or anchors in the name.  For example, you can use the Show Domain option to identify third-party Ajax or iframe calls. If you do not want to use the default convention at all, disable it by clearing the Enabled check box. In this case you must configure at least one custom page naming rule so that AppDynamics can identify and name pages.

Modify the default page naming rule

The default configuration covers how all your requests are named if you do not customize them further.

1. In the Web Page Naming, Error Detection, Thresholds, Percentiles, etc tab, expand Configure how Pages, AJAX Requests, and Iframes will be named.
2. In the Default Naming Convention section, select the elements you want to use for your default page naming.
3. Click Save.

Create Custom Page Naming Rules

You can create custom rules for identifying and naming pages.

To create a custom page naming rule, click the plus icon in the Custom Naming Rules section. Then configure the custom rule to identify and name the page.

This configuration screen is similar to the default configuration screen but it includes a priority field. The priority specifies which rule to apply to the naming of a page if it can be identified by more than one rule. For example, if CustomRuleA specifies Use the first 3 segments of the URL and has a priority of 9 and CustomRuleB specifies Use the last 3 segments of the URL and has a priority of 8, a page in which the URI has more than 3 segments will be named by CustomRuleB because it has a higher priority.

 Highest priority is 0.

The default rule, if enabled, has a priority of +Infinity.

Creating a custom naming rule 

1. Expand Configure how Pages, AJAX Requests, and Iframes will be named.
2. Click the + icon under Custom Naming Rules.
3. In the Custom Naming Rule dialog, enter a name for the custom rule that you are creating.
4. Check the Enabled check box to enable the rule.
5. Select the check boxes and radio buttons and enter the match criteria for AppDynamics to use to name pages.
6. Use the Priority parameter on a custom rule to specify which rule to apply to the request name if it could be detected by more than one custom rule. Custom rules are always evaluated before the default naming rule, beginning with the custom rule that has the highest priority.
7. Click OK.

Sample custom naming rule

In the example below, you might have multiple pages that include "search/r/region" in their URLs, so "search/r/region01", "search/r/region23", and so forth. You want to name all the pages from that set as a single page named "search/r/region". Using the Run regex on URI option, you remove the domain name and the number at the end of the URL, grouping all your "/search/r/region" URLs into a single 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 it would use the default page naming rule, or, if a rule with a priority of a value less than 4 exists, that higher priority rule.

Create Custom Page Exclude Rules

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

Create a custom exclude rule

1. Expand Configure how Network Requests will be named.
2. Click the + icon under Custom Exclude Rules.
3. Enter a name for the exclude rule that you are creating.
4. Check the Enabled check box to enable the rule.
5. Use the dropdown menus to provide the matching criteria for the URL and mobile application of the requests to be excluded.
6. Click OK.