Firebase Summit brings new tools for data analysis, performance insights, more

Today, Google hosted its annual Firebase Summit event, where the company announced new tools to make things like data analysis and performance monitoring easier for app developers.

If you’re not familiar, Firebase is Google’s suite of tools and services for developers to help streamline the process of building apps, as well as tools to promote growth. Most of Firebase’s services even offer a free tier to help get new apps off of the ground.

The most noticeable change coming from today’s Firebase Summit is a redesigned Performance Monitoring dashboard, which serves as home for stats like average startup time and amount of slow-loading moments. The new dashboard is built with the goal of making key metrics easy to read and interpret when there’s an issue, and since all apps are different, the dashboard is also deeply customizable to give you the exact view you’re looking for.

At today’s event, Google is also unveiling a set of new APIs for Google Analytics. The first is a “Measurement Protocol” which lets developers log certain events/activities to Google Analytics with a simple HTTP request. Meanwhile, the new “Data API” allows developers to craft their own reports and dashboards based on Google Analytics data, and an “Admin API” makes access control and other settings programmable.

Additionally, if you have complex user data, such as from storefronts, stored in BigQuery, Firebase’s integration can now use user segments created in BigQuery when targeting things like push notifications via Cloud Messaging.

For those who use Firebase Hosting to serve their web apps, Google also recently announced “preview channels” that allow you to test new deployments of your app without immediately affecting your live site. These preview channel deployments are hosted on private links that you can share with colleagues for the sake of testing the new version before formal release.

To find more announcements from the Firebase Summit, including a “Detect Online Presence” extension, be sure to check full details over on the Firebase blog.