I've Been Using Loupe 5 for a Month. What is it like?
Part of my job is to help test our software. Recently, that’s been Loupe 5, the next version of our centralized logging platform. Frankly, a lot of my usage has been getting nice screenshots and working on content we can use for the website closer to release. But I’ve also been doing the rest of my regular work using Loupe 5 the past month.
At first, I just figured it would be a good way to get “real user” experience with the software. Maybe you would call it dogfooding (that’s the term my boss enthusiastically used). Now, I’m using Loupe 5 because it lets me do my job faster, thanks to the new UI. Here, I’ll show you some features I regularly use in the test build, how the new UI helps, and give you a sneak peek of the next major version of Loupe.
Diving Into Data on Loupe 5
My primary usage for Loupe is to keep tabs on the Loupe trial, see what new users are doing, and find problems in the user signup. In practice, this involves climbing through session data and investigating any troubling events related to these processes.
I like to start by looking through the most recent sessions. It helps to get a lay of the land and see what happened last night, or during the current day. The session data can be tedious to work with though because we have so much of it. But Loupe 5 has made the process easier, thanks to the split-screen user interface. Let’s take a quick look at Loupe View in action:
This video shows the following sequence of events:
- Start in the main session view
- Dive into a specific session
- Check the session events tab
- Check the session users tab
- Click on a particular user (myself)
- Check the most recent events for that user
- Dive into an entirely different session
And this happened all on the same page.
In Loupe 4, I would have traveled through four separate pages to accomplish the same thing. Plus, I would have to back my way out of two pages as well. Let’s look at the same path:
Now, the loading times for Loupe 5 have been better in general, but don’t take these videos as definitive proof. I traveled these paths a few times before recording, so a lot of this stuff was in cache. For me though, technical speed has not been the biggest game-changer. It’s that I’m not punished by a long trip back through the program if the data takes me down a “rabbit hole.” I have access to the greater data set at all times and can move on from one session to the next with ease.
Searches in Loupe 5
Another way I find data on the job is by searching for specific users ( generally when looking for data on a recent trial or investigating a login issue). So let’s search for a user in Loupe 5 (myself):
Searches work similarly to how they do on Loupe 4. I search a term, and Loupe pulls up users, computers, issues, and events that match. In Loupe 5 though, the split-screen UI allows me to move from one search result to the next without going back through the software or redoing the search. This makes it much easier to find exactly what you are looking for, even in extensive results.
For me, it’s helpful while investigating a whole group, like a company that has the same email domain for each user. Instead of going in and out of the results or searching each user individually, I can view the whole crew on one page.
Why Does The UI Matter to You so Much?
Many of our older articles and documentation use phrases like drilling into the problem. But that is not really an accurate depiction of troubleshooting. Troubleshooting is rarely a perfectly linear process, which is why I find the new UI better. No matter where in the troubleshooting process I am, I can just move from one item to the next with fewer reloads.
The split-screen UI has been the standout feature of Loupe 5 for my job. It took a while to get used to, but it makes looking through logs less tedious and helps me quickly find what I need. Now… I just wish that Wikipedia had a similar design so I can find my way back from the philosophy page after I’ve traveled far across the site!
Stay Tuned for More on Loupe 5
Curious about Loupe 5? Wonder if it could make your job easier? We have a more detailed article on what to expect, and much more content coming soon. Better yet, Loupe 5 is out now and you can give it a shot in our 30 day free trial today.