What is an Application Environment?

An Application Environment represents a specific deployed instance of your application that you want operational monitoring for.  For example, you may have deployed the same web application to Development, Test, UAT, and Production.  Each of these would represent a different Application Environment.

An Application Environment has one or more Services - an individual application that provides a set of functionality as part of the deployed system.  You might have just one service - like a single web site that stands alone.  But, you may have many services in a complicated system that separates out background processes and foreground processes. 

How Can I Set Up an Application Environment?

To setup an Application Environment:

1. Select the Monitor Module from the left navigation
2. Click New in the upper right of the Your Application Environments dashboard
3. Provide a name for your new Application Environment and specify the Promotion Level.
4. Click Create to complete creating the Application Environment.  It will automatically create an Application Key for you to give all of the Loupe-enabled applications you want to have report into that Application Environment.  You can then optionally edit the Application Environment to tweak display values and set other tracking options.
5. Change the configuration of your applications to use the Application Key that was created for the environment.  This goes in the Server section and is an alternative to specifying a CustomerName or Repository.

How are Services created?

A new service is automatically created for each distinct Application that sends data with the same Application Key.  Each time data arrives at the server, it checks if there is already a service for the Application Environment specified for the Application Key.  If there isn't a service for the Application specified by the session data, a new one is created and linked with the session.

If you are deploying components you don't want to roll into the Application Environment (like say command line tools or peripheral applications that are part of the system but you don't need to monitor) then don't specify the Application Key and they won't get aggregated into the Application Environment.