Synthetic app

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Overview
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With the Synthetic Synthetic app you can create and manage synthetic monitors.

Permissions

The following table describes the required permissions.

Permission

Description

geolocation:locations:lookup

allows querying geographic location data for private locations

storage:buckets:read

allows querying data from Grail

storage:entities:read

allows querying monitored entities from Grail

storage:metrics:read

allows querying metrics from Grail

storage:events:read

allows querying events from Grail

document:documents:write

allows creating and updating filter sets

document:documents:read

allows querying stored filter sets

document:documents:delete

allows deleting filter sets

state:user-app-states:write

allows setting default filter set

state:user-app-states:read

allows querying default filter set

Installation

Make sure the app is installed in your environment.

This is a list of synthetic monitors with powerful filtering mechanisms that allow you to narrow down the list to your required tests. The list contains basic metrics and a 'preview' panel, which allows you to familiarize yourself with important information describing monitor configuration and the results of recent executions.

Results of execution of a selected test, with a focus on reported availability and performance. Details are provided on both the monitor and the step level.

Compare the visible parts of any past executions of HTTP monitor to quickly detect slowdowns, failures, or improvements across deployments, timeframes, or environments. Comparisons show differences in load times, response codes, errors, and payload content to diagnose root causes of anomalies.

Define the scope of this monitor and the test configuration details, including frequency, locations, conditions for considering test execution successful, rules for problem triggering, etc.

Define the configuration details of this private synthetic location, including its geographical position, assigned ActiveGates, rules for self-monitoring problem triggering etc.

1 of 5This is a list of synthetic monitors with powerful filtering mechanisms that allow you to narrow down the list to your required tests. The list contains basic metrics and a 'preview' panel, which allows you to familiarize yourself with important information describing monitor configuration and the results of recent executions.

The synthetic monitors page is the landing page of the Synthetic app and is the control center for your synthetic monitors. By default, the page displays all monitors in your environment, active or inactive, in a table with key availability and performance results, so you can check the health of your monitors at a glance. Powerful and flexible filters enable you to narrow your search for synthetic monitors.

To find out how to create a new monitor, see Create monitors.

Monitors table

By default, monitors with open problems (issues) are displayed alphabetically at the top of the table. Next, enabled monitors with no problems are displayed alphabetically, followed by disabled monitors displayed alphabetically.

You can hide and sort columns in ascending or descending order. Select Columns in the top-right corner of the table to select which columns to display or hide.

Pagination controls at the bottom of the monitor table allow you to specify the number of rows per page and to move through the monitor table from page to page.

The columns display the following information for each monitor.

Monitor name—Select to view a quick overview of the monitor to the right of the Synthetic monitors page
Created—monitor creation date and time
Last modified—ID of the user who last edited the monitor and the date and time of modification
ID - full monitor identifier
Last execution—date and time of the most recent execution from any location
Type—monitor type, for example, HTTP
Frequency—execution frequency or On demand, as specified in the monitor configuration
Availability—average availability during the selected timeframe
Duration—average performance during the selected timeframe in seconds

Monitor preview

In the Synthetic Classic Synthetic app, to display the preview panel for a monitor, select the monitor's name in the Monitor name column of the Synthetic monitors page.

To browse between your monitors, open the preview panel for any monitor and then select another monitor name to switch the preview to the newly selected monitor. Filters are persistent.

The preview panel shows:

Tiles for important information at a glance:
- Outage/Available/No data—the monitor availability status at the moment of the last executed test
- Active issues—the number of issues being observed at the moment
- Affected locations—the number of locations where outages happened within specific timeframe
- Availability—the monitors availability rate in percent within specific timeframe
- Total downtime—the total outage time for all locations within specific timeframe
- Duration—the average response time for all locations within specific timeframe
A list of problems, including the problem start date and duration, or No problems found. To analyze a problem in the Problems app, select the problem link in the list.
A list of changes. In latest Dynatrace, this section displays changes to the monitor: when it was changed, who changed it, and what they changed. You can only access changes from a specified timeframe.
Properties such as monitor type, locations, requests in last execution, frequency, steps, and tags.

Use the controls in the upper-right corner of the preview panel to:

Edit the selected monitor
Delete the selected monitor
Enable a disabled monitor
Disable an enabled monitor
Display the reporting page for the selected monitor (see below)
Close the preview panel

Filters

Filters allowing multiple selections help you find the monitors you're looking for. You can also save frequently used filters. Expand Open Dashboards panel or collapse the filters to focus on search or results, as required. The filters are automatically collapsed when viewing the quick overview for a monitor.

The following filter categories (each with multiple options) allow you to search for monitors.

Type—monitor type
Ongoing issues—monitors with and without availability or performance problems
Frontend application—associated RUM application
Status–whether monitors are active or inactive (disabled)
Locations–public and private monitoring locations
Device profile—for example, desktop, Apple iPhone 8
Last editor–ID of the user who last edited a monitor
Tags—values or key-value pairs applied to monitors; you can choose tags to include or exclude from your search.
Edited during the timeframe—monitors that were or were not edited during the selected global timeframe
ISP / Cloud provider—of public Synthetic locations
Frequency—monitoring frequency

How filters work

Within each category, you can select multiple filters. For example, when selecting monitors by Type, you can opt to view HTTP as well as DNS monitors. Within a category, filters are applied using the OR logic—monitors matching any selection are displayed.

The filter options shown in most categories depend on your monitors; only those filters relevant to your monitors are available. For example, if you have no HTTP monitors, you won't see the HTTP option to filter by.

The number of monitors matching each filter is displayed. For example, the list of Locations shows the number of monitors per location. This number is dynamically adjusted based on your filter selections in other categories.

You can select filters in multiple categories. Filter categories are applied using the AND logic. For example, if you select all Network availability monitors (DNS, ICMP, and TCP) and two tags, IP, and host-group, the resulting list contains network availability monitors with either the IP or the host-group tags.

Filter sets

You can save combinations of filters as named filter sets for quick access to frequently used search criteria—select Save new filter and provide a filter name. You can set one filter set as default to be applied each time you go to the Synthetic Synthetic app.

Select More next to a filter set for additional actions such as Set as default, Rename, Duplicate, or Delete.

Filter bar

The filter bar Variable at the top of the page displays a fixed filter for searching by monitor name: select Filter by name and enter your search string. Any additional filters or filter sets you apply are displayed in the filter bar, from which you can clear applied filters.

In the Create monitor section, you can choose the type of synthetic monitor that you want to create.

Create monitors

To create a monitor:

Select +New monitor in the upper-right corner of Synthetic.
Choose one of the following:

Browser—choosing this option will allow you to create a browser monitor in Synthetic Classic. Learn how to Create a single-URL browser monitor.
HTTP—choosing this option will allow you to create an HTTP monitor in Synthetic. Learn how to Create and configure an HTTP monitor.
Network availability—choosing this option will allow you to create a NAM monitor in Synthetic. Learn how to Configure a NAM monitor.

Reporting

For each monitor type, you can display a reporting page. See

NAM monitor reporting in Synthetic.
HTTP monitor reporting in Synthetic.
HTTP monitor reporting in Synthetic Classic.
Browser monitor reporting in Synthetic Classic.

The total monitoring time is divided into minute-level data points. All data points count as executions, although they don't necessarily coincide with actual executions.

On the screen below, the blue data points coincide with actual executions, and the white data points don't.

For example, if a monitor is set to execute tests every five minutes, every fifth data point (blue) coincides with an actual execution. All data points following the first failed ("down") execution and preceding the first successful ("up") execution count as "down." Thus, the total downtime is calculated as follows:

Total downtime = the first actual down execution + all following down data points.