---
title: "What is error tracking?"
page_name: "Error tracking"
type: "glossary"
slug: "error-tracking"
published_at: "2025-02-17"
modified_at: "2026-02-11"
url: "https://www.sumologic.com/glossary/error-tracking"
canonical: "https://www.sumologic.com/glossary/error-tracking"
markdown_url: "https://www.sumologic.com/glossary/error-tracking.md"
lang: "en"
excerpt: "Explore what error tracking is, error monitoring basics and tracking tools. Learn how Sumo Logic can help with error tracking and root cause analysis."
---

[Glossary](/glossary)# Error tracking

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##### Table of contents

 

 

 

## What is error tracking?

Error tracking is the proactive process of monitoring web applications or [microservices](http://www.sumologic.com/glossary/microservices) to identify problems and fix them before they become serious issues. Usually, error tracking reports will monitor your applications for any deviation from benchmark activity levels.

Key takeaways

- Error monitoring improves application health and prevents revenue losses.
- An error is not a bug. A bug occurs due to shortcomings in software, systems, platforms, while an error usually results from a problem with source code.
- An error tracking system enables DevOps teams to proactively find, triage, and fix any errors that occur in the front or back-end of applications.
- Sumo Logic’s integrated application observability and monitoring solution for logs enables faster issue resolution and root cause analysis with seamless integration between performance monitoring, distributed transaction tracing, and logs.

## Error tracking and monitoring basics

It’s important to monitor your applications and/or [microservices](http://www.sumologic.com/glossary/microservices) for errors for a couple of reasons.

1. Error monitoring improves application health. Monitoring for errors lets you identify issues with your applications to consistently maintain high performance.
2. Error monitoring prevents revenue losses. The faster your team reacts to errors and bugs, the faster they’re able to resolve them. This helps to prevent customer churn by maintaining a good user experience.

While bug and error are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same thing. A bug occurs due to shortcomings in software, systems, platforms. An error usually is a result of a problem with the source code.

## Javascript error monitoring

Javascript monitoring is a component of front-end application monitoring. It’s the practice of monitoring all of the components of your website or application that the end-user sees or with which they interact. Here are some best practices:

- Track across all browsers, but ignore older versions. A small percentage of users will be using older versions of browsers that are no longer supported by the vast majority of applications. Maintaining consistency across all browsers is challenging enough, but to also account for phased-out versions of those browsers should not fall on your list of priorities at all.
- Prioritize errors by the volume of users affected. Errors will vary across your user base, some Javascript errors will only touch 0.01% of users, whereas others will affect 20% or more. Make sure to prioritize accordingly as you address the different issues.
- Filter bot traffic. As you address bugs and errors, you’ll want to focus only on your human users, not bots.

## Error monitoring and tracking tools

An error tracking system automatically monitors and detects irregularities in your application or website. Full stack application monitoring and observability tools, like [Sumo Logic](http://www.sumologic.com/solutions/application-monitoring), enable [DevOps](http://www.sumologic.com/glossary/devops) teams to proactively find, triage and fix any errors that occur in the front or back end of applications.

To understand if an error tracking tool is right for your operations, it’s important to ask the following questions and look for the features outlined below.

- Does the tool have good dashboards to understand information and quickly check on application health?
- Can you trace the errors throughout your services?
- Does it integrate easily within your applications and infrastructure?
- Is it capable of discovering the root cause of issues?

**Common features of error tracking tools**

- Automated service discovery
- Observability dashboards
- Automated alerts
- Visual service dependency mapping
- Automated anomaly detection
- Global benchmarks
- Service and infrastructure stack drill-down and analysis

## Error tracking and root cause analysis with Sumo Logic

Introducing observability as part of the application strategy early is key to reliability. [Root cause analysis](http://www.sumologic.com/glossary/root-cause-analysis) correlates unusual spikes with [OpenTelemetry](http://www.sumologic.com/blog/opentelemetry-the-future-of-sumo-logic-observability) trace metrics, host metrics, and other relevant metrics to accelerate troubleshooting incidents in applications. But observability requires powerful unified analytics across the entire set of data to quickly uncover insights on the behavior of the application.

Explore how Sumo Logic’s integrated [application observability and monitoring solution](http://www.sumologic.com/solutions/application-monitoring) for logs enables faster issue resolution and root cause analysis with seamless integration between performance monitoring, distributed transaction tracing, and logs.

### FAQs

 Are the results of a root cause analysis always accurate?+Not always. The accuracy of the analysis depends on data quality, the expertise of the individuals conducting the analysis and the thoroughness of the investigation process. Log data is at the [atomic level](https://www.sumologic.com/blog/future-sumo-logic-atomic-level-logs) of data, making it the most helpful and accurate for root cause analysis.

 Can Sumo Logic provide end-to-end observability across my technology stack?+Yes, Sumo Logic provides log management, infrastructure monitoring, APM and more as part of our [full-stack observability](https://www.sumologic.com/solutions/application-observability) solution. Any new telemetry collected from across your tech stack (physical or virtual machines, clouds, microservices, etc.) provides additional context and insights that help you gain visibility into your overall environment.

 What is the importance of observability in maintaining service reliability?+[Observability](https://www.sumologic.com/observability) is crucial in maintaining service reliability by providing insights into system performance, identifying issues quickly, facilitating timely responses, and enabling proactive measures to prevent incidents. Organizations can ensure high availability, meet customer expectations, and [enhance customer experience](https://www.sumologic.com/blog/turn-off-on-reliable-secure-applications) by monitoring [key metrics](https://www.sumologic.com/glossary/infrastructure-metrics) and utilizing an observability tool. Observability helps detect potential failures, optimize system reliability, and effectively meet reliability standards.

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