Changelog 2021.08

Traces

Browser Bots now capture traces whenever an error occurs, and the first bot in each group captures traces of every step regardless.

Traces show up on the Traces tab of your live test, and in the Traces section of the test report.

They include:

• A screenshot of what the browser looked like at that moment
• A waterfall chart of resource timings from the page
• Detailed error messages from the browser automation library when available
• The bot number, step number, and URL where the error occurred

Further Reading

When you’re running a load test with hundreds or thousands of Browser Bots, errors are inevitable – a page might not load in time, a selector might not match, or the application could start behaving differently under heavy load. The tricky part has always been figuring out what actually happened when a bot hits an error. Without traces, you’d just see a count of failures and have to guess at the root cause.

Traces close that gap by capturing the browser’s state at the moment something goes wrong. The screenshot shows you exactly what the bot was looking at, the waterfall reveals whether a slow resource or failed request caused the issue, and the error message gives you the technical details. The first bot in each group also captures traces for every step regardless of errors, which gives you a baseline to compare against.

You can dig into traces on the Traces tab during a live test or in the test report afterward. They’re retained for a period after the test finishes, so you have time to investigate.