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GLOSSARY · U

User Journey

The sequence of steps a user takes to accomplish a goal, the right granularity for synthetic monitoring and SLO measurement.

Definition

A user journey is the multi-step flow a user goes through to accomplish a goal, log in, search for a product, add to cart, check out, receive confirmation. Synthetic monitoring scripts each step with a headless browser, so a single check exercises the whole flow end-to-end and surfaces breaks in any step. SLOs framed at the user-journey level (e.g. 'checkout flow completes p95 under 8s') are far more meaningful than per-endpoint SLOs because they reflect actual user experience.

Why it matters

Per-endpoint SLOs can all be green while the user-visible journey is broken: each request 200s in 200ms, but the redirect chain is broken, the form's required-field is missing, or the third-party widget fails to load. Journey-level monitoring catches what endpoint-level monitoring can't, and it's the SLI most aligned with what customers actually feel.

How Nova handles it

See the part of the platform that handles user journey in production.

Nova synthetic monitoring