1 Getting Started

This chapter introduces you to RUEI. It explains how RUEI can provide you with powerful analysis of your network and business infrastructure. The roles used within RUEI, the appearance of the Reporter interface, and how you can customize it, are also highlighted.

RUEI should already have been successfully placed within your organization's network, and the Initial Setup Wizard run to provide information about the network infrastructure. The procedure to do this is fully described in the Oracle Real User Experience Insight Installation Guide.

1.1 What is RUEI?

While organizations are increasingly looking to explore Internet opportunities, they require accurate and up-to-date information regarding their Web traffic to assess the effectiveness of their Internet operations. What is required is a solution that records every user session, and translates complex Web data into meaningful and understandable statistics which can then be the basis of effective business and operational decisions.

RUEI is a powerful Web-based utility to report on real-user traffic requested by, and generated from, your network. It measures the response times of pages and transactions at the most critical points in your network infrastructure. Powerful session diagnostics allow Application Managers and IT technical staff to perform root-cause analysis.

It enables you to view server and network times based on the real-user experience, monitor your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and trigger alert notifications on incidents that violate their defined targets.

You can implement checks on page content, site errors, and the functional requirements of your transactions. Based on this information, you can verify your business and technical operations. You can set custom alerts on the availability, throughput, and traffic of everything identified in RUEI.

RUEI comes with a library of powerful reports that provide both business-orientated and technical-orientated users with the information they need to make effective decisions. In addition, authorized users can quickly create their own reports or modify existing reports. Using these reports, they can directly interact with the Web data to gain a deep understanding of online usage behavior, as well as the overall status of Web applications. They can view these reports interactively, or receive them by e-mail.

Using RUEI's dynamic drill-down capabilities, you can quickly focus on any desired level of Web results.You can sort, filter, and export information. In addition, you can correlate any data across a wide variety of criteria, including time, client location, transaction, and user name.

The session diagnostics facility enables you to perform root-cause analysis of operational problems. It offers you the ability to assess any individual session, and review all the user's activity within that session.

1.2 Requirements

The workstations that will access the RUEI user interface must have one of the following browsers installed:

• Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and 3.0.

• Internet Explorer 6 SP2.

• Internet Explorer 7.

Note that Javascript must be enabled. No other plug-ins are required.

In addition, the workstation should have a screen resolution of 1024 * 768 (or higher).

Note:

Ensure that any pop-up blocker within the browser has been disabled.

1.3 Understanding User Roles

RUEI uses predefined roles and permissions to determine the actions that users can perform. For each of these roles, RUEI provides a set of reports and analyze tools to help them quickly and effectively meet their information requirements. These roles are explained in Table 1-1:

Table 1-1 Roles

Role	Description
Administrator	This user performs the initial configuration of RUEI, and maintains the basic network-related configuration (such as mail settings and Collector attachments) used by the system. In addition, this user acts as first-level support for the system, and is responsible for such things as performing backups of the current configuration, the configuration of advanced system settings, and the administration of the other users authorized to work with the system.
Security Officer	This user is responsible for managing all system settings that are affected by the organization's network security policy. In particular, they: Import the security certificates and private keys used to decrypt HTTPS transactions, and keeps them up-to-date. Decide the scope of what is monitored within the organization's network. They can set up network filters to prevent the capturing of specific networks or hosts, or Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs), or to reduce overall network traffic. Implement and maintain security-related measures for private data passed in Web traffic.
Business users	These users are concerned with evaluating visitor behavior according to business goals. As such, they use the business intelligence that the system offers them to monitor a wide variety of issues, such as identifying the most popular paths taken to your Web site, or how engaged visitors are on particular pages or sections. They may be concerned with improving customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, increasing conversion rates, or monitoring the effectiveness of Web site-based marketing activities. Based on assigned permissions, they use the dashboard functionality, as well as on-demand and mailed reports, to maintain an overview of the organization's operations. They can also use these reports and data exports as the basis for further analysis by IT specialists.
IT users	These users are concerned with supporting the IT and other technical information the system needs to monitor the Web environment. Typically, they are responsible for deeper analysis of failed SLAs or KPIs. They use the reporting and Data browser facilities to their fullest to locate the reported anomaly or failure. For example, they might identify that failed user sessions are only occurring for users from a particular network domain.

Depending on the configuration required by your organization, users can be authorized to perform combinations of these roles. However, there can only be one Administrator. There is no limit to the number of users who can be defined.

1.3.1 Permissions

Within RUEI, report categories and views within the Data browser have a status assigned to them. This status can be business-related, IT-related, or both. In this way, business and IT users can immediately locate the information that is relevant to them. For example, on entry to the Report library, the list of displayed reports for a business users is filtered to reflect the reports with which they will want to work.

For each user, other than the Administrator, their business and IT access permissions define the level of access they have to these items. These are permissions are incremental. That is, each level contains all access permissions beneath it, as well as new ones. These are described in Table 1-2:

Table 1-2 Business and IT Access Permissions

Access Level	Business User	IT User
None	The user has no access.	The user has no access.
OverviewFoot 1	The user can view the dashboard, the KPI overview, and alert history.	The user can view the dashboard, the KPI overview, and alert history.
Inquiry	The user has read-only access to reports, and can create PDF downloads.	The user has read-only access to reports, and can create PDF downloads.
Analytical	Has access to the Data browser. Can create new reports, and modify (public or own) reports.	Has access to the Data browser. Can create new reports, and modify (public or own) reports.
Full	Define and modify KPIs. Edit the service level schedule. Edit alert schedules. Define and modify transactions. Define and modify site-wide errors.	Define and modify KPIs. Edit the service level schedule. Edit alert schedules. Define and modify applications. Define and modify named Web servers. Define and modify named clients. Define and modify site-wide errors.

^Footnote 1 A user who is not authorized to at least Overview level as either a Business or IT user cannot log on.

The creation and management of user roles and permissions is described in Section 9.17, "Managing Users and Permissions".

1.3.2 Access to the Data Browser

Each view within the Data browser is either Business or IT-related (or both). Access to a view is only available for users with the relevant Analytical level permission. These are shown in Table 1-3.

Table 1-3 Analytical Level Permissions for Data Browser Views

Category	View	Business	IT
Applications	Overall
	All pages		X
	All sessions		X
	All transactions	X
	Key pages	X	X
	Problem analysis
	Failed URLs		X
	Failed pages	X	X
	Slow URLs		X
	Suites
	E-Business SuiteFoot 1	X	X
	JD EdwardsFootref 1	X	X
	PeopleSoftFootref 1	X	X
	SiebelFootref 1	X	X
	WebLogic Portal	X	X
Services	Overall
	All functions		X
	Problem analysis
	Failed functions		X

^Footnote 1 The group's associated accelerator package must be installed for it to be available. In addition, at least one suite for the group must have been defined.

1.4 Starting RUEI

To start your RUEI session, point your browser at the following URL:

https://Reporter/ruei

Note:

If you have not already received this information, contact your Administrator for the required IP address or host name part of the URL.

The Logon dialog box shown in Figure 1-1 appears:

Figure 1-1 Login Dialog Box

Description of "Figure 1-1 Login Dialog Box"

Enter your user name and password, and click Login. If you have not already been assigned a user name, contact the Administrator.

Note:

If you experience problems logging on, ensure that any pop-up blocking facility within your browser has been disabled.

1.5 Working with the Dashboard

After logging on, you are presented with the dashboard shown in Figure 1-2:

Figure 1-2 The Dashboard

Description of "Figure 1-2 The Dashboard"

1.5.1 General Window Parts

The RUEI screen is comprised of the following elements that are always present throughout the system:

• The menu bar at the top of the window. Here, the most important features are available. Some of these are also available via icons.

• The taskbar under the menu bar. Here, you select a tab for the activity you want to perform. For example, working with reports, performing system administration, or configuring how your Web environment should be monitored. Note that the availability of tabs and options under them depends on your assigned role and permissions.

• The location bar directly under the taskbar tells you where you are in the system.

1.5.2 The Dashboard

The dashboard is intended to provide you with actionable business information in a format that is both intuitive and insightful. It helps you identify trends, patterns, and anomalies. By providing information about your organization's metrics and KPIs, it readily lets you see where they are in relationship to your objectives.

The dashboard is automatically refreshed every three minutes, and contains the following elements:

• A map highlighting the location of today's client sessions. This is shown with a color coding scheme to represent the locations from where the client sessions originate. Hence, a bright red color indicates a country with a high level of visitors, while one with a white color indicates no traffic originating from there. More detailed views are also available for Europe, USA, and Asia.

• Today's five most active applications. That is, these applications that have generated the most page views. Applications are fully explained in Section 6.2, "Defining Applications".

• Today's five most frequent problem pages. For example, errors were detected on the pages, or they are taking an usually long time to load in the client browser.

• The five most recently generated alerts. The icons used in the displayed list are explained in Figure 4-11.

• The status of all defined KPIs. In order to facilitate location, failing KPIs are listed first. You can click a listed KPI to compare its behavior over a given period with other KPIs and performance metrics. This is fully described in Section 4.2, "Comparing KPI Behavior". Note that you need to have at least Overview access level permission as a Business or IT user to use this facility.

• The most common functional errors encountered during delivery of all monitored contents. Using this pie chart, you can, for example, assess the relative occurrence of server or network errors.

• The relative activity of the monitored Web site during the last five minutes in terms of object requests, page views, and the total throughput on the server. Note that these are assessed against an automatically calculated average.

• The page views, sessions, and average page load time since the start of the current day.

• The most recent messages posted by the Administrator. These could include information about experienced network or server problems, scheduled maintenance activities, or installed service packs.

1.5.3 Customizing the Dashboard Logo

The logo shown in the top right-hand corner of the window can be customized to show your organization's logo. Note that this facility is only available to the Administrator. Click the current graphic. You are prompted to specify the name and location of the new graphic file. This file will be resized (preserving aspect ratio) to fit an area of 200 x 50 pixels. When ready, click Upload.The file must be in PNG, GIF, or JPEG format.

1.6 Customizing Your Environment

From the System menu, select Preferences (Figure 1-3) to customize your personal settings:

Figure 1-3 Preferences Menu

Description of "Figure 1-3 Preferences Menu"

The following options are available:

• User: allows you to specify the settings that will be used for your sessions. You can control the national language used during your sessions, whether the reports you receive are sent in multiple e-mails or bundled into a single e-mail, and the module in which you want to start your sessions (for example, reports, favorites, or user management). These settings are fully explained in Section 9.17.3, "Modifying a User's Settings".

• Formatting: allows you to specify how numeric values will be formatted in reports. You can specify the decimal point indicator, the character used as the thousand separator, and the date format (05 Feb 2008 or Feb 05, 2008).

• Change password: allows you to change your system password. You are required to enter your current password, and to confirm the new password that you want to use.

  Note:

  According to your organization's security policies (described in Section 9.17.4, "Enforcing Password Security Policies"), you are required to regularly change your password. You will receive a warning each time you logon seven days prior to password expiration. If, during this time, you have not reset your password, your account will be locked. If you will be out of the office for more than seven days prior to your password expiring, it is strongly recommended that you reset your password prior to your absence.

1.7 Before You Start

In order for RUEI to start data monitoring and reporting, it must be configured with some information about your network infrastructure. Once completed, user traffic reporting is available. The following actions should have been performed before you start to use RUEI:

1. If the monitored traffic includes SSL-based sessions, the Collector will not be able to decrypt the SSL traffic unless the SSL keys are made available to the system. This is fully described in Section 8.6, "Managing SSL Keys". Of course, non-SSL traffic is unaffected by this requirement.

2. It is recommended you specify the cookie structures used within your Web environment. Otherwise, session tracking is based on IP address and browser. This is fully described in Section 7.1, "Specifying Cookie Technology".

3. Within RUEI, user identification is first based on the HTTP Authorization field. After that, it is derived from the supplied GET/POST argument specified in the application's definition. When this is not configured, the SSL client certificate is used (when available). The common name (CN) portion of it is used. Therefore, if you are using arguments within URLs, the item within these used for user identification must be specified in order to provide reliable results. This is described in Section 6.2.8, "Defining User Identification".

4. Page identification within RUEI is based on applications. Essentially, an application is a collection of Web pages. Note that information about any pages that could not be identified using application and page definitions is discarded and, therefore, not available through reports and the Data browser. This is fully described in Section 6.1, "Naming Pages" and Section 6.2, "Defining Applications".

5. Transactions give you greater insight into how visitors experience your Web pages. This facility is described in Section 6.5, "Building Transactions".

6. Check the status of the Collector(s) by selecting System, then Status, and then Collector status. This is fully described in Section 9.2, "Viewing the Status of the Collectors". In addition, you can obtain an overview of the monitored network traffic by selecting System, then Status, and then Data processing. This is described in Section 9.7, "Viewing a Traffic Summary".

1.8 Ending Your Session

To finish your session, select Logout from the System menu.