Session recordings basics
Last updated February 7, 2025
Overview
Session recordings in Atlas allow you to view and analyze user interactions on your website. This feature helps you understand user behavior, identify bugs, and improve the overall user experience.
How session recordings work
Atlas captures user activity locally in the browser. This includes page changes, clicks, and other interactions. The data is periodically sent to the Atlas backend for storage and analysis. Even if a user doesn't create a ticket or encounter a bug, their session can still be recorded, showing how they navigated through your site.
To access all session recordings, click the hamburger menu and select session recordings .
Key features of session recordings
Session recordings show various aspects of user activity.
Page changes
You can see when a user moves from one page to another. Each page change is numbered, allowing you to track the user's journey through your site.
Network requests
Failed API calls or package downloads are captured. This helps identify issues with data retrieval or resource loading.
Console errors
Any errors that appear in the browser console are recorded, providing valuable information for debugging.
Developer tools
You can access developer tools within the recording to see more technical details about errors.
Time stamps
Each action in the recording is associated with a specific time stamp, allowing for precise tracking of events.
IP address
Access customer IP details directly within session recordings. Get more context in session recordings with IP address visibility, helping with troubleshooting and understanding user behavior.
Analyzing recordings
The recording interface provides a quick glance at important metrics—just enable ‘show developer tools” to access those.
Network calls lets you see how many network requests were made during the session. Console errors lets you view the number of errors that appeared in the console.
If integrated with Sentry, you can see errors logged there as well.
Sentry integration
Atlas can integrate with Sentry, a popular error logging service. When integrated, Atlas sends a customer ID to Sentry. When Sentry captures an error, it sends a payload back to Atlas with the session ID, allowing Atlas to link the error to the exact session and customer profile.
Navigating recordings
You can easily jump between events in the recording timeline. This is particularly useful when debugging issues, as you can quickly move to the exact moment an error occurred. You can also use the timeline to navigate to specific page changes or events.
Sharing recordings
Similar to sharing YouTube videos, you can share links to specific points in a recording. This is useful when collaborating with developers or team members to address issues. You can provide a link with a timestamp, allowing others to jump directly to the relevant part of the recording.
Time correlation
Session recordings use real-world time stamps, making it easier to correlate events in the recording with other logs or data sources. This is crucial when trying to pinpoint the exact time an error occurred and examining the events leading up to and following the error.