RUM and front-end
Real-user monitoring (RUM) shows what real visitors experience, not what a synthetic probe sees. Front-end applications instrumented with the Owlpane Browser SDK report to Browser at /observability/browser; Session replay (Beta) rebuilds a session at /observability/browser/replay, Journeys (/observability/journeys) track multi-page flows, and Synthetics (/observability/synthetics) adds outside-in checks.
What it is
Back-end telemetry tells you a request was served; RUM tells you how the page felt to the person using it — how fast it rendered, where the network time went, which errors threw, and which calls the browser made. Owlpane derives these from exception and navigation spans the Browser SDK emits, so front-end and back-end telemetry share one workspace, one scope bar, and one set of trace IDs.
Key capabilities
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, INP, and CLS at the 75th percentile across sampled page views, banded good / needs work / poor.
- Navigation timing — DNS, TTFB, download, and transfer size per document load, broken down by page and path.
- Pages, loads, and JavaScript errors — scope charts to a page or path, list individual loads, and group browser exceptions.
- Browser → API calls — the fetch/XHR calls a page made, so a slow page can be tied to a slow back end.
- Session replay (Beta) — masked DOM replay of a session, honouring the SDK's masking configuration and the replay retention cap for your plan.
- Journeys — count how many visitors who started a multi-page flow (two to six pages, in order) reached the end, compare with the prior period, and join the state of linked checks.
- Synthetics — API, TLS, TCP, SSH, DNS, and browser checks that run every 1, 5, or 15 minutes, open an incident after several consecutive failures, and close it on the first success.
Where it lives
| Surface | Console route | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Browser | /observability/browser | Core Web Vitals, navigation timing, pages, loads, JS errors, and fetch/XHR. |
| Session replay (Beta) | /observability/browser/replay | Masked DOM replay for a browser session. |
| Journeys | /observability/journeys | Completion of multi-page flows, with linked check state. |
| Synthetics | /observability/synthetics | Outside-in checks and the uptime incidents they open. |
| Private locations | /observability/synthetics/locations | Private probe locations. |
Retention and privacy
Replay retention is capped by plan: Starter 7 days, Team 30 days, Scale/Enterprise 90 days. The console replay view shows the retention it is honouring and the maximum for the plan.
Masking is configured in the Browser SDK before replay is enabled in production, and the console's Mask control applies additional redaction while viewing. See Plan and billing for the retention tiers.
How data gets in
RUM data comes from @owlpane/browser streaming spans over OTLP to ingest.owlpane.com with a workspace owl_ing_* key. Synthetics checks are run by Owlpane itself (or from a private location) and need no in-app instrumentation.
- Browser & frontend RUM SDK — install and configure
@owlpane/browser. - SDKs — the wider package index.
- OTLP ingest reference — the endpoints browser telemetry uses.
- Ingest keys & authentication — passing keys in the browser.
- Integration library — uptime and check packs.
Concepts
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| RUM | Real-user monitoring: telemetry from actual visitors, not synthetic probes. |
| Core Web Vitals | LCP, INP, and CLS, reported at the 75th percentile across sampled page views. |
| Session | A sequence of page activity from one visitor, replayable when payloads are captured. |
| Journey | Two to six pages in order, with completion counted from real page loads. |
| Synthetic check | An outside-in probe that runs on a schedule and opens an incident on repeated failure. |
Relating front end to back end
The browser SDK emits exception and navigation spans, so a slow page can be followed into the fetch/XHR calls it made and then into the back-end traces those calls produced. When the same session or trace identifiers appear on both sides, a session detail can open Requests or Logs to continue the investigation across the boundary.
Related
- Session replay and RUM task guide — vitals, sessions, and privacy.
- Traces — the back-end side of a browser request.
- Features index — where the Errors and Applications surfaces sit in the console.
- Alerts and on-call — route uptime incidents to your channels.
- Dashboards — put RUM panels beside back-end signal.
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