Proactive JavaScript Error Management at Cornell School of Hotel Administration

Cornell School of Hotel Administration operates multiple web applications serving students, faculty, and industry partners in the hospitality management field. As self-described "total skeptics," the school's technical team prioritizes thorough evaluation of new tools and technologies.

The team faced a critical challenge: JavaScript errors were occurring on their public-facing websites without their knowledge. As they noted, "In JavaScript, no one will hear you scream." When JavaScript errors occurred, pages would be left in a "precarious half-useful state" - appearing normal but failing to function properly.

The team understood that while developers would instinctively open browser developer tools when encountering issues, regular users would simply abandon the site for a competitor's platform. They needed a way to detect and address these invisible errors before they impacted user experience.

Craig Riecke

Software Engineer

"It's a little bit of a shock to see your perfect website generating JavaScript errors that you've never heard about. TrackJS revealed issues we never knew existed."

Cornell implemented TrackJS as their JavaScript error monitoring solution. The integration was remarkably simple - requiring only a single script tag in their standard header. The team was particularly impressed that the solution required no browser plugins or special software, working entirely with standard JavaScript.

After implementation, the team confirmed that error monitoring had no noticeable impact on site performance, maintaining their site's responsiveness while providing comprehensive error tracking with detailed information about browser versions, loaded libraries, and execution context.

The Cornell team used TrackJS's daily summary emails to identify and resolve actual code issues. In one notable case, they discovered a "TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object" error that was occurring consistently across modern browsers.

Using TrackJS's detailed error context, they traced the issue to a jQuery version compatibility problem between jQuery 1.11 and jQuery-UI 1.8 loaded by a third-party OpenTable script. The solution was straightforward: adding the jQuery Migrate plugin resolved the compatibility issue entirely.

Craig Riecke

Software Engineer

"If it doesn't work in MY browser, it's a legitimate bug! TrackJS helps us identify and fix issues before they impact our users."

Cornell recognized that not all JavaScript errors were actionable. They encountered errors in foreign languages, vague error messages like "Invalid procedure call or argument," and errors referencing unknown functions clearly caused by browser plugins or other external factors.

To address this, they implemented sophisticated error filtering using TrackJS's onError callback, allowing them to automatically ignore non-actionable errors while focusing on issues they could actually resolve.

Cornell developed a pragmatic strategy for JavaScript error management: rather than pursuing zero errors (which they determined was unrealistic for public-facing sites), they monitored for sharp increases in error rates that could indicate recent code changes or emerging issues.

When users reported issues, the team could use TrackJS's dashboard to pinpoint specific errors by URL and timeframe, dramatically reducing debugging time and enabling proactive maintenance through daily error summaries.

TrackJS transformed Cornell's approach to web application reliability. The system revealed "JavaScript errors that you've never heard about" on what appeared to be a "perfect website," providing crucial visibility into previously hidden issues. By implementing TrackJS, Cornell School of Hotel Administration gained the confidence that their web applications were performing reliably for users, with the tools necessary to quickly identify and resolve issues when they arose.