# Creating a CloudWatch RUM app monitor for a web application
<a name="CloudWatch-RUM-get-started-create-app-monitor"></a>

To start using CloudWatch RUM with your application, you create an *app monitor*. When the app monitor is created, RUM generates a code snippet for you to paste into your application. The snippet pulls in the RUM client code. The RUM client captures data from your application's user sessions and sends it to RUM.

## To create an app monitor for a web platform
<a name="web-platform-app-monitor"></a>

1. Open the CloudWatch console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/).

1. In the navigation pane, choose **Application Signals**, **RUM**.

1. Choose **Add app monitor**.

1. For **App monitor name**, enter a name to be used to identify this app monitor within the CloudWatch RUM console.

1. Select **Web** as the platform.

1. For **Application domain list**, enter the registered domain names where your application has administrative authority. You can also use a wildcard character `*` to allow any sub-domain or top-level domains (for example, \$1.amazon.com, amazon.\$1, \$1.amazon.\$1).

1. For **Configure RUM data collection**, specify whether you want the app monitor to collect each of the following:
   + **Performance telemetry** – Collects information about page load and resource load times
   + **JavaScript errors** – Collects information about unhandled JavaScript errors raised by your application

     You can select **Unminify JavaScript error stack traces** to debug unminified JavaScript errors. To use this feature, upload your source map files to an Amazon S3 bucket or folder and provide the Amazon S3 URI. Once enabled, RUM will use these source maps and enrich JavaScript error events by adding the unminified stack trace. Note that after enabling, this feature only processes new JavaScript error events and cannot be used on previously collected data. For more information, see [Enabling unminification of JavaScript error stack traces](CloudWatch-RUM-JavaScriptStackTraceSourceMaps.md).
   + **HTTP errors** – Collects information about HTTP errors thrown by your application

   Selecting these options provides more information about your application, but also generates more CloudWatch RUM events and thus incurs more charges.

   If you don't select any of these, the app monitor still collects session start events and page IDs so that you can see how many users are using your application, including breakdowns by operating system type and version, browser type and version, device type, and location.

1. Select **Check this option to allow the CloudWatch RUM Web Client to set cookies** if you want to be able to collect user IDs and session IDs from sampled user sessions. The user IDs are randomly generated by RUM. For more information, see [CloudWatch RUM web client cookies (or similar technologies)](CloudWatch-RUM-privacy.md#CloudWatch-RUM-cookies).

1. For **Session samples**, enter the percentage of user sessions that will be used to gather RUM data. The default is 100%. Reducing this number gives you less data, but reduces your charges. For more information about RUM pricing, see [RUM pricing](CloudWatch-RUM.md#RUMpricing).

1. End user data that you collect for CloudWatch RUM is retained for 30 days and then deleted. If you want to keep copies of RUM events in CloudWatch Logs and configure how long to retain these copies, choose **Check this option to store your application telemetry data in your CloudWatch Logs account** under **Data storage**. By default, the CloudWatch Logs log group retains the data for 30 days. You can adjust the retention period in the CloudWatch Logs console.

1. (Optional) Choose to add a resource-based policy to your app monitor to control who can send `PutRumEvents` requests to your app monitor. If you choose **Create public policy**, a resource policy will be attached to your app monitor that enables anyone to send `PutRumEvents` requests to your app monitor. For more information about this method, see [Using resource-based policies with CloudWatch RUM](CloudWatch-RUM-resource-policies.md).

1. If you attached a resource-based policy in the previous step, then you don't need to sign requests to CloudWatch RUM with AWS credentials, and you can skip setting up authorization. Otherwise, for **Authorization**, specify whether to use a new or existing Amazon Cognito identity pool or use a different identity provider. Creating a new identity pool is the simplest option that requires no other setup steps. For more information, see see [Authorize your web application to send data to AWS](CloudWatch-RUM-get-started-authorization.md).

   Creating a new Amazon Cognito identity pool requires administrative permissions. For more information, see [IAM policies to use CloudWatch RUM](CloudWatch-RUM-permissions.md).

1. (Optional) By default, when you add the RUM code snippet to your application, the web client injects the JavaScript tag to monitor usage into the HTML code of all pages of your application. To change this, choose **Configure pages** and then choose either **Include only these pages** or **Exclude these pages**. Then, specify the pages to include or exclude. To specify a page to include or exclude, enter its complete URLs. To specify additional pages, choose **Add URL**.

1. To enable AWS X-Ray tracing of the user sessions that are sampled by the app monitor, choose **Active tracing** and select **Trace my service with AWS X-Ray.**

   If you select this, `XMLHttpRequest` and `fetch` requests made during user sessions sampled by the app monitor are traced. You can then see traces and segments from these user sessions in the RUM dashboard, and the X-Ray trace map and trace details pages. These user sessions will also show up as client pages in [Application Signals](CloudWatch-Application-Monitoring-Sections.md) after you have enabled it for your application.

   By making additional configuration changes to the CloudWatch RUM web client, you can add an X-Ray trace header to HTTP requests to enable end-to-end tracing of user sessions through to downstream AWS managed services. For more information, see [Enabling X-Ray end-to-end tracing](CloudWatch-RUM-modify-snippet.md#CloudWatch-RUM-xraytraceheader).

1. (Optional) To add tags to the app monitor, choose **Tags**, **Add new tag**.

   Then, for **Key**, enter a name for the tag. You can add an optional value for the tag in **Value**. 

   To add another tag, choose **Add new tag** again.

   For more information, see [Tagging AWS Resources](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_tagging.html).

1. Choose **Add app monitor**.

1. In the **Sample code** section, you can copy the code snippet to use to add to your application. We recommend that you choose **JavaScript** or **TypeScript** and use NPM to install the CloudWatch RUM web client as a JavaScript module.

   Alternatively, you can choose **HTML** to use a content delivery network (CDN) to install the CloudWatch RUM web client. The disadvantage of using a CDN is that the web client is often blocked by ad blockers.

1. Choose **Copy** or **Download**, and then choose **Done**.