This article is the last in a series of overviews of our new UI. You can find the others here:
This time we will dive into the changes we've made in the analysis.
The analysis page has remained mostly the same:
This article is the third in a series of overviews of our new UI. You can find the others here:
This time we will dive into the changes we've made in the runtime phase.
The scenario edition page has a new layout, very similar to the design page:
This article is the second in a series of overviews of our new UI. You can find the first one here.
This time we will dive into the changes we've made in the design phase. We've addressed many pain points from the old UI that we want to detail here:
This will make the design in OctoPerf even faster, so that you can focus more time on your tests and analyzing them.
The first item on the list is obviously the new virtual user creation process. A lot of people were confused by the older UI and used the menus to get back to the project level when what they really wanted was to get back to the last step. Of course the fact that you are now required to click on Back / Next to move to the another step of the process requires one more interaction but it's also a lot easier to understand what's going on since it results from your actions. We think it's the right way to go since the only drawback is adding a couple of clicks on a process that is only used a few times per project.
To make things easier for beginners, the contextual documentation will display as soon as you select any option. It's also a better use of horizontal space that would otherwise be lost:
Our new UI has been available for everyone since a few weeks now. It is a major project for us that has taken several years to get to this stage. It's been a lot of effort but we're confident that it will be worth it when you see all the new possibilities.
That being said, we thought it would be helpful to ease you into it by going through some of the key features together. The goal is to talk about the major UI changes that impact most if not all the new screens. Then we'll cover the specifics of each individual steps (like design or runtime) in later blog posts.
Of course the first thing that comes to mind is the navigation through OctoPerf. And we've made a lot of changes in this area.
The top menu has become a left-handed menu now. We've always been trying to keep up with properly adding the new features in the menus like we did last year. But we thought it could be improved further. Typically, we noticed that new users struggled to notice what's inside the workspace menu so we decided to split it into another "Tools" submenu.
Workspace and projects remain visible at all times in order to navigate back to their level easily. It can also be collapsed in order to save horizontal space once you are familiar with the layout and icons.
Today we have a look at the added value you get by using a combination of load testing and APM. Our tool of choice at OctoPerf is Instana, because we share a lot of common values. To put it short we both have a huge focus on ease of use and docker oriented platforms. I think it makes this collaboration even more relevant for our users.
Anyway, as you probably know OctoPerf is oriented toward running realistic tests as easily as possible. And Instana will get you live insight about your entire platform allowing you to instantly understand the consequences of your load test. This blog post is a collaboration with folks at Instana and you can find the second part whith a detailed analysis of the test on their blog.