Download PDF
Download page Get Started with Browser Synthetic Monitoring.
Get Started with Browser Synthetic Monitoring
This page describes Browser Synthetic Monitoring, including how to access the Jobs page, create a job that measures a URL, view the results from the Sessions page, and finally how to edit and delete your job.
Create a Job
- Open one of your browser applications.
- Click Jobs to open the Jobs page.
- If you don't have any previous jobs, click Create a New Job >. If you have previous jobs, click Add.
- From the New Job dialog:
- For Specify your Test, enter a URL in the URL field and "Example Job" in the Name field.
- For Choose Browsers, select Chrome.
- For Choose Locations, click + and select any location.
- Click Save.
Monitor Job Trends
From the Synthetic Job Dashboard, you can quickly monitor synthetic jobs' availability and performance trends.
Availability Trends
The Availability Trend column that displays the status of the executed jobs as shown in the screenshot below. The Availability Trend shows the session status based on the coloring codes listed in Availability Trend Status Codes. The session status is not based on health rules. See Session Status.
The session status is not based on health rules. See Session Status.
Availability Trend Status Codes
The Availability Trend shows the session status based on the coloring codes listed in this table.
| Availability Trend Status Color | Session Status |
|---|---|
| Green | OK |
| Yellow | WARNING |
| Red | FAILED |
| Dark gray | BROKEN |
| Light gray | INTERNAL_ERROR |
Understanding the Availability Metric
The Availability metric is the percentage of successful sessions for a given time range. That is the percentage of sessions with status as OK or WARNING within the given time range.
The View Options enables you to view the availability over periods not restricted to the specified time frame. The following list describes the availability options:
- Availability Last-24-Hours - The availability for the last 24 hours from the moment the page is refreshed/opened.
- Availability Month-to-Date - The availability from the starting moment (12 AM) of the current month according to user's timezone until the current time (page refreshed/opened).
- Availability Week-to-Date - The availability from the starting moment (12 AM) of the current week Monday according to user's timezone, considering week starts on Monday, till now (page refreshed/opened).
Performance Trends
The Performance Trend column displays the performance threshold status of the executed jobs as shown in the screenshot below. The Performance Trend column only displays successful sessions: those with the status of OK or WARNING. The performance trend statuses are based on the configured performance thresholds for the synthetic job.
For example, if the Availability Trend column shows 5 OK and 5 FAILED status counts (50% green, 50% red), then the corresponding Performance Trend column will show only 5 OK counts (100% green). If the Availability Trend column has 5 failed and 5 broken (50% red, 50% gray) jobs, that is all unsuccessful, then corresponding Performance Trend column will show no count that is an empty bucket (light gray).
Performance Trend Status Codes
As with the availability status, colors are used in the trend column to indicate performance status:
| Performance Trend Status Color | Description |
|---|---|
| Green | No threshold violated: Green. |
| Yellow | Warning threshold violated. |
| Red | Critical threshold violated. |
A job can have a warning violation for one metric and a critical violation for another metric. In this case, the critical violation will override the warning violation.
View the Results
- From the Jobs page, verify that your job has a check next to it indicating that the job has been enabled.
- After a few minutes, you should see a time that your job was last run and some metrics.
- Select your job and click Details.
- You should now see the results for your job on the Sessions page.
Understand the Results
You can understand the results in several different ways and levels from the Sessions page. You can sort session results by criteria and then examine the details of a specific session in the Session Details. From the Charts tab of the Sessions page, you can then view widgets representing aggregated session data in charts and a configurable set of fields for each session.
Examine Session Details
You can double-click any session to get a summary of the session, page details, and a breakdown of details for each page in the session. You'll be able to view how the page loaded, the resources that were requested, and the business transaction for each page. You can use this information to find where network latency occurs or where scripts break.
For example, from the Session Details dialog, you can determine that the visually complete (when the user would see the completely loaded page) took around 16 seconds and then examine the duration of the page load from the HTTP request to the first byte, from the first byte to DOM ready, and finally from DOM ready to visually complete.
Get a Quick Overview
From the Sessions page, you can click the Charts tab to view widgets representing aggregated session data. For example, the Lowest Availability widget shows you what locations are the least available, so you can confine and focus on issues in specific locations.
