What are Crashes in Adobe Analytics?

[JayGr]

I'm not finding any great documentation online and the interface doesn't have a definition either. Does anyone know of any technical documentation to explain how the Crash metric works? Or can you explain yourself? Laymen's terms appreciated if possible. Thanks!

[Vinay_Chauhan]

Hi @JayGr 

In AA, specifically for mobile app tracking using the Adobe Experience Platform SDK, a 'Crash' is counted when the app closes unexpectedly usually due to an unhandled exception or system-level crash.

To track crashes, Adobe uses a listener in the SDK that detects if the app didn’t shut down gracefully on the previous launch. When the app is reopened, it sends a crash hit along with the standard lifecycle data.

A few to-do's:

• Crashes are reported after the app is reopened.

• You won’t see a crash metric unless the SDK is properly configured to collect lifecycle events.

• These are typically captured as mobile metrics, so you won’t see crash data for web properties.

If you’re not seeing crash data, double-check your SDK version and configuration to make sure lifecycle and crash tracking are enabled.

Hope this helps!

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Hi @JayGr,

Crashes are part of the Mobile LifeCycle metrics.

I am not sure if you are aware of the normal Lifecycle behaviour, so I am going to start with that, then show where the Crash logic fits in.

• User Opens App
• Lifecycle Events are fired, including
  • Launches, DaysSinceLastLaunch, Upgrades, DaysSinceLastUpgrades, etc
• Page 1 Loaded (tracking for the page)
• Page 2 Loaded (tracking for the page)
• App Sent to the Background
• (Lifecycle Metrics Paused)
• App Brought Back to the Foreground
• (Lifecycle Metrics Resumed - this may or may not trigger lifecycle tracking, depending on how long the app has been in the background)
• App Sent to the Background
• (Lifecycle Metrics Paused)
• User "Swipes Off" (i.e. closes the application)

Now, the Crashes Metric is fired along with the other Lifecycle metrics... however, this only triggers if the app closes "unexpectedly"

Now, what that means is that, if the app closes while the lifecycle metrics are not paused, then Adobe will treat this as a crash.

So in the above scenario, if the app is sent to the background and the lifecycle metrics are not paused and the user swipes the app out of the background to close it... then Adobe will treat this as a crash...  Likewise, I suspect if your app has a specific "close app" option for the user, I believe that the developers will need to pause the lifecycle metrics, then close the app.

As much as it would be amazing for the Crash metrics to really integrate into the app and detect proper crash data, it's really just a simplified method to detect when the app "closes while Lifecycle is running".

Improper Lifecycle implementation can lead to inflated "crashes" (we had that initially on our mobile apps when our developers didn't pause lifecycle metrics when the app was sent to the background... it resulted in almost 100% crash rate, lol.