Platform Debugger

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Platform Debugger

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The Multiplayer Platform Debugger is the only debugger built for the complexity of distributed systems.

It leverages OpenTelemetry to allow teams and users to create complete session recordings, capturing everything: frontend screens, backend traces, metrics, logs, and full request/response content and headers. No data is left behind.

It helps your team pinpoint and resolve bugs faster and save time combing through APM data.

Getting Started

To set up the Platform Debugger follow these steps:

• Open your project
• In the left-side menu, click "System" to open the System Dashboard
• Click "Configure Auto-Docs + Debugger"
• Name your integration
• Hit "Create"
• An OpenTelemetry (OTel) token will be created for your OTel integration.
• Follow these steps to configure OpenTelemetry

ℹ️ The Platform Debugger and Auto-Documentation both leverage OpenTelemetry. That’s why they share a set up window.

Once you click “Confirm”, we will proceed with the Multiplayer OpenTelemetry integration and start adding backend data (e.g. traces and logs) to your Platform Debugger sessions. Please note that if you close the set up window before finishing the set up, new OTel tokens will be generated when you re-open it.

🔑 Pro tip: If you're setting up the Platform Debugger, you'll need to incorporate the web library into your application (and enable the widget) in order to start recording a debugger session. See below for more information.

Platform Debugger Widget

The Platform Debugger widget needs to be incorporated into your internal or user-facing application to provide users the ability to start recording and send a debug session.

The steps to configure the widget are included in the steps to configure OpenTelemetry.

Here's an example of how the Platform Debugger widget looks like:

🔑 Pro tip: We're currently developing a browser extension to make it easy to record debugging sessions without having to change your app. If you're interested in being notified when it's released, please send us a note.

Main Functionalities

These are the main functionalities in Platform Debugger:

• Record sessions to see the exact steps to reproduce an issue.
• See deep platform insights for each session: everything that happened in your backend platform - metrics, traces, and logs - not just front end APIs.
• Review user issues: Enable your end-users to record deep session replays of any bugs / unexpected behaviours they come across.
• Share insights with your team — skip the long tickets, emails and endless Slack threads.

Top Navigation Overview

Left:

• Views Panel: Create a list of filtered views within a session, by selecting specific session events you want to group together.

Center:

• Session Information Panel: Open the session information panel to review and edit the session name, comments, browser details, etc.
• Enter Fullscreen
• Switch to List View: Move the insights panel to the bottom of the screen (switching from vertical to landscape view) for a better deep dive into events, console, traces, logs.
• Hide the Recording: Hide the recording of the user steps.

Right:

• [Coming soon] AI Assistant
• [Coming soon] Share session: View-only sharing is coming soon. In the meantime, you can invite your team members to collaborate within your Multiplayer project and review all debugger sessions.

Review and Edit Session Information

The Session Information Panel has two tabs:

About - where you can:

• Edit the session name
• Add tags to a session (type the tag name and press enter)
• Review any comments users included in the session recording
• Review the recorder's information (name, browser info, etc.)
• Delete a session

Comments - where you can leave comments for your team.

Create Custom Views of Events

To create a custom view of a selection of events within a debugging session follow these steps:

• Open a session within the Platform Debugger
• Open the "Views" panel
• Select the events you want to group within a view
• Click "Create a view" in the "Views" panel

Review Information per Session Event

For each session we capture backend traces, metrics, logs, and full request/response content and headers. No data is left behind!

To view the information for each event recorded, double click on the desired session event.

Filter Session Events

Events within a Platform Debugger session can be filtered by:

• Type (trace, log, event, console)
• Starred events
• Component
• Level (info, error, warn, debug)

Levels are assessed automatically. Here's an overview what each means:

• INFO: Indicates a general informational messages about the application’s state and workflow. Used for key checkpoints and expected operations.
• DEBUG: Indicates a detailed diagnostic information useful for developers when troubleshooting issues.
• WARN: Indicates a potential issue that is not currently breaking the application but may cause problems in the future.
• ERROR: Indicates a serious issue that could point to failures in execution, preventing normal operation.

Next Steps

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You did it! What’s next?

• Automatically document your entire system architecture
• Build, test, and debug API integrations with ease