Correlation IDs are special Capture Attributes which are used to group together, track, and analyse individual transactions as they are seen at different Agent points.  This process is called Correlation.

The primary correlationID must be unique for a transaction (and is therefore commonly created by a combination of date, session and transactionID fields). Correlation IDs may be provided to VMX-Capture in all messages for the business object, or VMX-Analytics can create a synthetic Correlation ID for Agent Events using another correlation strategy.

Alternative IDs can be used where there are some Agents that don’t receive a correlation ID - multiple Alternative IDs can then be chained together to identify the Item. Unlike the correlationID, Alt IDs need only be unique for the duration of the correlation window (defined within the Flow).

Each Business Object type has a pre-defined journey through the network or application. This pre-defined journey is called a Flow. Each Flow has a specific list of Attributes that are populated by every Agent in the Flow.