Custom events are a developer's best friend

New Relic extensively utilizes custom events to tailor its telemetry data collection, setting it apart from typical customer use cases where standard instrumentation is preferred. Custom events in New Relic allow users to define their attributes and values without prior registration, leveraging the schemaless nature of the New Relic database for immediate querying. This flexibility enables New Relic to track specialized lifecycle events in its distributed database, providing valuable insights into system behavior. Custom events also facilitate experimentation and data-driven decision-making by allowing precise tracking and analysis of specific processes. Unlike logs, custom events are structured from the outset, negating the need for post-processing extraction and offering performance benefits due to their specificity and lower volume compared to generic events. Users can record custom events via New Relic's APM agents or Event API, and these events can be integrated into dashboards using NRQL.