How MileIQ uses bitdrift to gain visibility into user sessions & debug with confidence

The problem: incomplete view into user devices

The team at MileIQ cares deeply about the experiences of their users. So, when it came to debugging particularly tricky issues, the team wasn’t getting the level of visibility that they really wanted & needed. A lack of device and network-specific information meant some data that would otherwise help with remote debugging was completely inaccessible. Add on top of that data limits from MileIQ’s mobile analytics provider, and suddenly triaging particularly difficult user experience issues became incredibly tedious.

Enter bitdrift.

For MileIQ, bitdrift unlocked a treasure trove of important data for the team – allowing them to drill down into otherwise difficult issues on a user-by-user basis with much more efficiency and ease.

For MileIQ, user privacy is a top priority. Choosing new tools means finding partners equally serious about data protection. Bitdrift fits right in, giving MileIQ detailed visibility into user sessions and devices while maintaining strict privacy standards.

Gaining a comprehensive view into user behavior

With bitdrift, the team can see all of the most important information consolidated in one secure place. MileIQ’s Head of Client Engineering, Pavel Holyavkin, shares “[we] see everything in one place…logs, the user flow, UX live frames for the user session…it helps us to troubleshoot faster.”

Senior Android Engineer, Anny Walker, adds, “it's way clearer for me now not only what is happening in our app, but in the user device. And for our tool, that’s very important.”

This added layer of visibility has made it much easier to debug particularly challenging issues, and to understand what’s happening on a specific user device.

Extending observability beyond user behavior

Outside of consolidating user information in one place, bitdrift also helps the MileIQ team dig into metrics they might not otherwise have visibility into.

For instance, Anny shares how bitdrift’s out-of-the-box insights provide immediate value for the team: “In bitdrift, we can get device signals like battery usage and network performance – things that we are not actively putting somewhere in code. We get it just because we integrated the bitdrift SDK.”

But the extent of the telemetry the MileIQ team collects certainly doesn’t end there. By allowing the team to log anything they want, but store only the most important telemetry, bitdrift also helps them avoid the limitations that other tools impose. With another tool they use, Pavel shares “we’ve already hit [the limit] multiple times in the last couple months... we spend time on [questions like] ‘how do we reduce those events?'"

In contrast, bitdrift doesn’t force any of those limitations on the team. According to Pavel, “we are able to capture more [data], just because [bitdrift] allows us to. Whatever we put in the logs, we can see in the tool.”

Using bitdrift as a release & debugging tool

For MileIQ, bitdrift also helps ensure that new releases run smoothly. Anny shares, “bitdrift has entered our release process. At the end of our release process, we check all of the health metrics in bitdrift first.” Adding, “we are using Instant Insights from bitdrift to understand if there are any network issues that we are not seeing in the new version, or if there is a memory leak that we didn't used to have that we are now having… it really changes the way our release process works.”

And, once a release is out, bitdrift helps the team debug any issues that do crop up faster. For example, Anny shares “a few months back, we noticed there were a lot of requests for specific endpoints that were very excessive, and obviously it was causing performance issues…we quickly identified the specific endpoint in bitdrift and were able to make the fix. Once we released a new version we started seeing this [endpoint request] number drop drastically – so we understood that the fix worked. Without bitdrift, we probably wouldn't have been able to catch this issue.”

Conclusion

Adding Bitdrift to their tech stack has unlocked a much more powerful way of remote debugging for the MileIQ team. With the ability to drill down into specific user sessions and consolidate logs, user flows, and more in one place - without worrying about limitations or overage fees - the team can now solve issues quickly and confidently.

This enhanced visibility has also enabled MileIQ to stay true to its user-first approach. By proactively identifying and resolving potential issues before they impact users, the team ensures drivers and admins experience fewer interruptions, greater reliability, and a consistently seamless app experience – critical to MileIQ’s mission of making mileage management effortless and delightful.