HeadSpin Product Updates 2022

Our mission is to enable customers to deliver flawless connected experiences. For this past year we have been focusing heavily on improving the usability of our platform for our customers. Our main areas of focus have been audio, increase, more clarity on aspects of the platform in the UI, additional kpis, and a new data lifecycle policy that affects many parts of the HeadSpin platform.  Here is a list of updates split into different categories that will be beneficial to organizations.

Additions to the API:

The new v1 app management API is a centralized app artifact management system on HeadSpin. This will simplify the rest api and promote a standard HeadSpin across the different platforms. Additionally, this will allow users to add/track more app metadata like file size, os minimum, and build commit to name a few. These can be used as selectors as well. 

New api routes allow for the user to view all of the media and audio ids in a certain organization. This will allow organizations to keep track of the media and audio files they have available on the platform to use for analysis.

For android devices network shaping can be added to the create session api. Previously only available via Appium so the user can test on different network conditions manually and through different automation frameworks besides just Appium. 

Additions to the platform:

Now the ability to delete applications through a data lifecycle policy will be available which will better help maintain a clean repository of your applications and take the manual processes of doing so out. Additionally, session data can be managed through the policy as well.

The ability has been added for the user to clean devices for clearing cache and/or to help the end user troubleshoot. Additionally, more documentation has been added for troubleshooting audio and a button that should help the end user repair the BT device if it does become disconnected has been added. You can view and select the audio profiles as well. These did reside in the advanced section of the remote control view but now it can be found under device configuration.

On Remote Control devices list page, AVBoxes and related devices are now grouped and sorted to the top by default along with a visual indicator on row hover to show which devices are part of that AVBox group. This will assist the user better manage devices manually.

Appium inspector has been built into the platform as well as you can start appium sessions while already using the device instead of closing the device and re-opening with the inspector. This could save time when finding xpaths on the device for creating automation scripts.

The documentation page has a search bar and the total docs have been added as a sidebar no matter what docs page you are on for easier navigation.

Sessions can now be shared outside of the organization for a set period of time that will expire. This will better help the end users work across different parts of the organization that may not need full access to the HeadSpin Platform but need to view a certain performance session.

Network is now captured for Android 13 devices. 

Impact score has been added which will allow you to more easily digest the user experience of that performance session and compare sessions over time. This can also be used as a kpi for the session as well for an overall score that can be improved over time and a quick measuring stick.

Added more Dashboards templates to our Grafana Dashboards that are provided that will help visualize data across different use cases Telco, gaming, and performance testing to help customers start visualizing their data quicker with low to no sql query formation by them.

Additions to the performance session analysis:

The ability to run analysis of performance sessions with any of the kpis with user specified values in a user specified range of time can now be identified. A possible use case could be anytime the Video MOS goes below a value of 3 can be identified through this analysis tool instead of looking through the actual performance session. 

The ability to use labels to perform an analysis for video kpis. This way if only a certain number of kpis in the video suite are important they can be run instead of the whole suite. Additionally, you can select a certain time range instead of the entire session which is the current implementation of adding the session-type: video label produces. 

As of now 5G capabilities have been added for the android platform.

New issues cards have been added: Slow DNS Query and Duplicate DNS Query.

Appium: 

The capability headspin:enableAdbShell has been added to allow for mobile:shell for use in appium scripts which will allow the end user to interact with more of the device than previously allowed.

The capability headspin:quitSession has been added so that the user set the user flow status instead of using the performance session api the Headspin:session.name and headspin:session.description have been added for the same use case.

Added the HeadSpin enableJSConsoleLog Selenium capability to leave the JavaScript console log output for Firefox, Chrome and Edge.

CLI:

New: Implemented a new hs tunnel feature that allows network traffic to be routed from remote HeadSpin devices through your local network.

The windows distributions of the HeadSpin CLI are now signed which will allow more customers to use the cli tool on windows that had security that would not allow this previously.

Conclusion

That concludes the key product updates that have been launched this year until October 2022. Some of our key areas of focus in the upcoming quarters will be Appium 2 open-source launch and support and a new application management UI.

Follow this space to learn more about some exciting updates to the HeadSpin Platform, as our product and engineering teams are focused on innovating with a singular goal of perfecting digital experiences for end users of enterprises across the globe.

Main updates from this year that our end users will see. There has been a good effort in behind the scenes work as well as bug fixes and patches to create a more seamless end user experience with the least amount of issues that will continue in the future. As we look forward to closing out the rest of this year the HeadSpin team plans on focusing our efforts on adding some features that our on-premises users do not have and on usability and ease of use of the platform.