FEATURE: Add field for device type (phone/tablet/etc) to RUM data

[andrewvc]

Today we get specific devices (iPhone 5 etc) but not the broad categories (phone, tablet, etc.). It would be useful for aggregations to add those broad categories to the documents we index.

[jalvz]

The device name AFAIK comes from analyzing the User-Agent header with the Elasticsearch User Agent processor.

The Elastissearch processor relies on a bare bones UAP Core regex file.
UAP Core parses brand and models (which Elasticsearch ignores), but not device types. That feature have been asked to them several times, but it always have been rejected on the grounds of beeing too subjective, and that the parser is complex enough as is.

The best way forward that I can think off would be to clone/extend the regex file (or find another one on the web, there might be one) that has device types, and then have the processor to pull those in.

This sounds like a non trivial undertaking involving some risks, but maybe is worth checking with the Elasticsearch team. Thoughts?

[drewpost]

@jalvz With my previous product we used https://udger.com We'd take the database, augment it with some of our own UA strings from our synthetic monitoring agents so they could be correctly identified and filtered out of RUM data and then use that at ingest. It had all of the necessary data fields.

[paulb-elastic]

Closing as this has been made available though the merged elastic/elasticsearch#69322

elastic/kibana#95918 has been raised to get this added as a filter option in User Experience.