Opening a session video from the Session List brings you to the Playback tab. Session videos are essential for diagnosing errors. A video of an error occurring gives unique insight into the customer experience, and may help you identify the step, field, button, or process that triggers the error. From there, you can examine your user logs and source code to uncover the error's cause.
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The Playback tab has two parts: the Session Player and the Session Timeline.
Session Player
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Through the Session Player, you can watch a customer's session and see where errors impacted their journey. Session videos block out user-identifying information, but you can track the customer's progress by following the mouse movements on screen. You can speed up the playback to 2x, 4x, or 8x. You can also slow the playback down to ½X or ¼X.
Above the player, a banner lists the date, time, and timezone of the session recording.
Session Timeline
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The Timeline tracks every event captured in the session video, with timestamps associated to each major action. Above the timeline, a banner lists important details about the session recording, including the friction factor, operating system, browser, and browser version. The session timeline is divided into page views to group videos that track the user’s journey on a specific page. A session video is actually made of up several smaller videos, and buttons along the left side of the timeline allow you to play or Pin a Video.
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The timeline also includes diagnostic markers that indicate the funnel step present in each video and the primary symptom(s) experienced at each step. You’ll find these markers on the right side.
Timeline Settings
By default, the timeline excludes http events. However, you can open the Timeline Settings dropdown and check the Show HTTP Events box to view these entries. If your domain has HTTP Data Collection enabled, you can select an event to open the event's header, payload, and response information. However, not all HTTP entries will have event information. Events with purple arrows can be expanded, while events without details are grey and non-interactable.
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The Timeline Settings dropdown also includes the option to Show Page Lifecycle Events. Visit our Guide to Page Lifecycle Events to learn more.
Finally, the settings dropdown includes the option to Show Web Vitals. Web vitals represent elements of the user experience in a session that can be measured, quantified, and rated on a three point scale: Good, Improvable, or Poor. When enabled, web vital events will appear in the timeline next to its overall score.
Learn more about Web Vitals.
The Session View also includes tabs for Details, Pinned Page Visits, and Same Browser Sessions.