Getting Started with Metrics

Overview

This guide introduces AppStatus Metrics and covers:

• Explore every numeric series from agents, apps and custom code
• Prometheus remote write — keep your existing instrumentation
• Label-based filtering and grouping
• Pin the queries you check often
• Attach alert rules to any series

What are Metrics in AppStatus?

Metrics is the explorer for every numeric time series on the platform, whether it came from the agent, from an application SDK, or from instrumentation you wrote yourself.

If you already expose metrics in the Prometheus format, you do not need to re-instrument anything. Point remote write at the ingest endpoint and your existing series arrive with their labels intact.

Key capabilities:

• Unified explorer across agent, application and custom metrics
• Prometheus remote write and exporter-format compatibility
• Label filtering, grouping and aggregation
• Pinned queries for the series you check daily
• Alert rules attachable to any series

What you will see

What the explorer looks like

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Troubleshooting

Operational Guidance

• High label cardinality is the usual cause of slow metric queries.
• Alert on symptoms your users feel, not on every metric you happen to collect.
• Golden metrics — rate, errors, duration, saturation — cover most incidents on their own.

Step-by-Step Setup

If you already run Prometheus, this is a configuration change and nothing else — point remote write at AppStatus and your series arrive with labels intact. If you are starting fresh, send metrics from the SDK instead.

1. 1

   Create an ingest key scoped to metrics

   Open Ingest Keys and create a key scoped to metrics for the environment you are setting up. The key value is shown once — copy it into your secret manager now, not into source control.

   WhereIngest Keys → Create key

   Tip

   One scope per key. A key reused across signals turns a single leak into full ingest access.

2. 2

   Send your metrics

   Either configure Prometheus remote write to point at the ingest endpoint, or emit metrics from the application SDK. Existing exporters keep working — nothing about your instrumentation changes.

   WhereMetrics → Add source
3. 3

   Confirm labels arrived

   Find the series in the explorer and check its labels are the ones you expect. Labels are what you filter and group by, so a missing one limits every query you will write later.

   WhereMetrics → Explorer

   Tip

   Check cardinality here too. A label carrying user or request IDs creates a separate series per value and will make queries slow.

4. 4

   Pin the queries you check often

   Build the handful of queries you look at daily and pin them, so the answer is one click away rather than rebuilt each time.

   WhereMetrics → Explorer → Pin
5. 5

   Attach alert rules

   Add rules to the series that represent something a user would feel. Alerting on every metric you happen to collect produces noise nobody reads.

   WhereAlerts → Alert rules

Configuration Options

Every option you can set, what each choice means, and what to pick. Use this as a reference while you fill in the form.

Feature Reference

Every feature, where to find it in the app, and what it does. Use this when you know what you want to do but not where it lives.

Next Steps

Continue building your monitoring stack: