Adding Observability to the Girard Training Stables Scheduling Tool

Girard Training Stables is a horse-based nonprofit organization that offers riding lessons, mental health support, and physical therapy. A scheduling tool was recently built for them to assist in managing as many as 90 volunteers across many different events. Our goal was to add observability to this scheduling tool, as being able to better observe the tool’s internal state would make fixing any problems easier. To add this observability we added both frontend and backend monitoring to track metrics such as how many users sign up for new accounts, when users start and finish creating an event, how much the server running the website is using its resources, and how many errors are caught while the server is running. Using these metrics, we were able to gain much insight into the internal state of the website and its users. We found that the frontend metrics were useful to non-technical users, with 70% of the users surveyed being able to correctly understand the data generated and theorize about parts of the website UI that could be improved based on said data. We were also able to correctly catch and log 100% of the test errors that were generated, and send alerts to administrators if these errors led to system failure. Overall, we were able to significantly improve the observability of the Girard Training Stables scheduling tool by adding monitoring, making it more robust, scalable, and easy to improve for the future.