Rare is the DevOps team that has the bandwidth to manually parse through and prioritize what needs to be fixed among what can number millions of application-error alerts. This includes distinguishing between minor glitches and those errors that can bring to a screeching halt an organization’s capacity to meet its customers’ needs and expectations.

A viable error-monitoring system should, ideally, automate the communication of error data in a way that indicates what must be done to make a fix.

A system might be able to signal every single error, perhaps totaling millions of alerts.

The error alerts users receive must be “actionable,” Ben Vinegar, vice president of engineering, for Sentry, said. “That’s a really hard problem,” Vinegar said.