Announcing workflow timeout actions: observing silence
Today we are very excited to launch a small yet extremely powerful addition to the bitdrift Capture workflow engine: timeout actions. Timeout actions unlock an entirely new set of investigations that were previously impossible: observing when something does not happen. Let’s dig in!
Recall that Capture is a very different take on observability. Capture couples local storage with real-time control in order to deliver 1000x the signal when you need it, and none when you don’t. The core of the system’s real-time dynamic control is what we call the workflow. A workflow describes a state machine that is sent to clients for execution, such as the example shown in the following screen shot.
Workflows allow you to dynamically match on sequences of events, and then produce telemetry based on the results including synthetic metrics, user journeys, funnels, complete session captures, and more. The workflow above demonstrates a dynamic onboarding funnel. Up to now, workflows have been limited to describing when something does happen: a user taps a button, sees a specific error, makes a specific network request, and so on. While immensely powerful (we love seeing customers quickly solve bugs that were previously considered impossible to understand, let alone fix), the presence of something happening is only one class of observation. What about the absence of something?
The workflow above shows a timeout in action. In this example, the workflow waits for a series of events in an onboarding flow, but if the user doesn't advance past phone verification within a set amount of time (10 minutes in this case), the timeout branch activates instead. This seemingly tiny feature is immensely powerful. Do you want to know how many users did not transition through a screen within 10s (this case is sometimes called a “soft lock”)? How about seeing a specific user session when this happens? We think you almost definitely do want to know many cases like this and we now have you covered.
Stepping back, the timeout action vividly illustrates the power of dynamic observability. Traditional observability is limited to observing signals that do happen (saying nothing about the volume of data that must be sent to traditional vendors to make this possible). Observing something that does not happen is uniquely only possible using local storage, real-time control, and dynamic state machines. And knowing the absence of something is often equally as important, if not more so, than knowing its presence.
Capture is changing the mobile observability game by adding a control plane and local storage on every mobile device, providing extremely detailed telemetry when you need it, and none when you don’t. If the lack of timeout actions was keeping you away, now is the time to give us a try!
Interested in learning more? Check out the sandbox to get a hands-on feel for what working with Capture is like or get in touch with us for a demo. Please join us in Slack as well to ask questions and give feedback!