A monitor is the workhorse of the service. These technological marvels perform all the work of monitoring for defined conditions under which they must dispatch alerts.
We offer the following monitor types:
Note: Date and time calculations for a monitor always occur in the timezone that you selected for the monitor when you created it.
An At Ping monitor dispatches an alert every time it receives a ping, and that's the only time it would dispatch an alert.
This type of monitor is useful when the decision that an alert must be dispatched occurs outside of our service, and you just want to use our comprehensive email, SMS, chat, and push alerting infrastructure to dispatch the alerts.
A Heartbeat monitor expects to receive at least one ping within a defined elapsed period of time, and sends alerts when it does not receive the expected ping(s).
The ping interval clock starts ticking when you create the monitor, using the monitor start date that you supply.
Whenever you change the monitor start date or the expected ping interval, the ping interval clock is reset and recalculated.
Every time that a ping is received, the ping interval clock is reset and recalculated. For example, if a monitor expects at least one ping every 60 minutes, when it receives a ping, the next 60 minute period starts at the time when that ping was received.
With this type of monitor you can send a ping, with the word fail
in the pingCustomCode
field, to indicate that the monitored service failed. You can also send a ping with the word reset
in the pingCustomCode
field, to reset the status of the monitor to OK
.
This type of monitor is useful to check that ongoing events are actually ongoing, such as the execution of long-running batch jobs, etc.
A Last Ping monitor is similar to a Regular Interval monitor, except that the expected arrival of a ping is not determined by a set interval.
In this case, every ping carries with it the date and time when the next ping should be expected.
With this type of monitor you can send a ping, with the word fail
in the pingCustomCode
field, to indicate that the monitored service failed. You can also send a ping with the word reset
in the pingCustomCode
field, to reset the status of the monitor to OK
.
Other than that, this type of monitor functions exactly like a Regular Interval monitor.
A measured monitor measures the elapsed time between two different events, and it dispatches an alert if the duration was shorter or longer than an expected duration.
The measurement period clock is started by sending a ping to the monitor with the value of start
in
the pingCustomCode
field. The clock is stopped by sending a ping with the value of
stop
in the pingCustomCode
field.
An alert is dispatched when the stop
ping is received and there was an anomaly in the measured
duration.
With this type of monitor you can send a ping, with the word fail
in the pingCustomCode
field, to indicate that the monitored service failed. You can also send a ping with the word reset
in the pingCustomCode
field, to reset the status of the monitor to OK
.
This usefulness of this type of alert is legion, because it can alert on too short durations and too long durations.
A Regular Interval monitor expects to receive a ping at regular intervals, and sends alerts when it does not receive the expected pings.
The ping interval clock starts ticking when you create the monitor, using the monitor start date that you supply.
Whenever you change the monitor start date or the expected ping interval, the ping interval clock is reset and recalculated.
You can specify a number of grace seconds to allow after the expected arrival time of a ping before deciding that an alert must be dispatched.
With this type of monitor you can send a ping, with the word fail
in the pingCustomCode
field, to indicate that the monitored service failed. You can also send a ping with the word reset
in the pingCustomCode
field, to reset the status of the monitor to OK
.
This type of monitor is useful to check on the regular occurrence of events, such as the execution of batch jobs, arrival or departure events, etc.
A Scheduled Repeatable Alert monitor automatically sends an alert at a predetermined (scheduled) date and time.
Optionally, you can configure the monitor to repeat the alert at predetermined intervals, for example, once every year, once every hour, etc.
This type of monitor is useful when you want to schedule and forget a future-dated alert.
A Web Content monitor visits a specific external web page at regular intervals and checks the content of the page for the presence or absence of one of the following:
You can also trigger an unscheduled check of the web page by sending a simple ping (no parameters) to the monitor. This unscheduled check does not modify the regular check interval of the monitor.
Xpath is an incredibly powerful tool that you can use to check for anything on the web page.
We evaluate the content of the page when it is fully loaded and after all JavaScript has executed.
The monitor sends an alert when the specified text or node is either absent or present, depending on how you configure the monitor.
It also sends an alert if the target web page is unreachable.
The following are samples of the potential use cases:
Try the following Google searches for more information on XPath:
If you create a monitor that uses XPath filters, you would probably want to test it to make sure that it will produce the desired result.
We suggest the following steps, if you want an alert when an item is absent:
To test a monitor that send an alert when an item is present, just do the inverse of above. First test for absent and then set the monitor to check for present.
A Web Response monitor visits a specific external web page at regular intervals and performs the following checks:
The monitor sends an alert when the either of the checks above fails.
You can also trigger an unscheduled check of the web page by sending a simple ping (no parameters) to the monitor. This unscheduled check does not modify the regular check interval of the monitor.
There are two ways to pause and resume monitors, namely:
pause
or resume
in the pingCustomCode
field.
Whilst paused, a monitor does not consume any credits.
Yes, monitors can send the same alert to multiple external platforms at the same time. See the alert service article for a list of types of alerts that we support.
Each external platform account or destination is configured as an alert service, which is then connected to the monitor. That effectively tells the monitor, "When you send an alert, send a copy of the alert to all these alert services."
Note: In addition to being able to send an alert to multiple platforms at the same time, monitors can also send the same alert to multiple accounts on the same platform. For example, the same alert can be sent to three Telegram accounts, two Twilio accounts, five webhooks, etc. Each distinct account on each platform must be contained in a separate alert service.
The following could be the reason why that happens:
To create a monitor, use the steps below:
To change or delete a monitor, use the steps below:
There is no limit to the number of monitors that you can create in your user account.
Deleting a monitor will delete the monitor and any pings, alert logs, and monitor status logs that were attached to the monitor.
No, monitors cannot be moved or copied between partitions.
Cannot find the answer to your question? Visit our support page for personalized support by our staff.