A deeper dive into API run management
We love Nerd Mode here at SyncHub, seeing all the juicy details of data transfer is both useful and satisfying to our refined nerdy senses. However for the most hardcore among us it still wasn’t enough - the details weren’t quite as juicy as they could be and the itch to know exactly what was happening in a run wasn’t quite being scratched. And on a practical level there was still a lot of useful information that was only available by manually examining our logs - making life difficult and time consuming for our customer support team.
To that end we decided we needed to get granular and build out some detailed reports to surface our log activity right up to the application itself. So without further ado we are pleased to introduce our new API Run Management Reports…
Accessing the reports
Accessing the reports is done via our existing Rolling average summaries, accessible via Nerd Mode on your Connection and Endpoint dashboards:
Once you’re into the reports, you get an extremely detailed break down of exactly how your API connectivity has been operating. You can see how long any run took, what period it covered and what its outcome was. The chart at the bottom shows a nice breakdown of the runs according to their outcome - good for spotting any problems at a glance.
Since successful runs tend to significantly outnumber failed ones you can check the “Errors only” box to exclude successful runs from view and focus in on any issues. The chart can filter by connection, endpoint within that connection, time period and specific outcome so you can easily locate the data you are interested in - basically, the reports answers every question that our support team asks when fielding customer inquiries.
Taking action
In our mind, an event log is useless unless you can actually take action on it. We deferred this release for a couple of months while we tried to pry our developers away from their code long enough to populate our Knowledge Base with detailed explanations about each outcome and what action you, the customer, might be able to take to mitigate any recurring issues.
Now, when we drill down on an event, you can click the Outcome section on the right to take action:
Teach a man to fish…
This functionality is a good example of our general philosophy at SyncHub (or, more specifically, its parent company, Blackball Software). Yes, good UX usually requires keeping a user interface clean and uncluttered of unnecessary information. However, (most) clients are perfectly capable of understanding complex scenarios if you can clearly expose the technical underpinnings of how your system works.
This knowledge leads to a higher level of understanding and satisfaction amongst users, and (in our experience at least), providing our users with the same tools used by our own support team means that they can often help themselves when issues or questions arise. This means less burden on our team, and a quicker turnaround for our users. Everybody wins.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.