Synthetic Monitors

Docs > Monitors > Monitor Types > Synthetic Monitors

Overview

When you create a Synthetic test, Datadog automatically creates an associated monitor. You can set up notifications when the Synthetic test monitor alerts.

Create a Synthetic test monitor

You can only create Synthetic test monitors within the Synthetic Monitoring section of the application. The general Monitors page is used for creating other types of monitors, such as those based on metrics, logs, or processes.

Create a monitor in the Monitor section of a new or existing Synthetic test to send notifications when a Synthetic Monitoring test is failing. Monitors are associated with the Synthetic test you create and link to the alerting conditions set in your Synthetic test configuration. To use monitor attribute and tag variables, create a metric monitor.

Monitor messages in Synthetic Monitoring consist of:

Title: The name of the monitor.
Custom message: Optional text written when creating the monitor.
Auto-appended summary: Includes failing locations, error messages, and links to the test.
Footer: Includes details from the last failed test run.

Creating a monitor in your Synthetic test

View and manage Synthetic monitors

Customize the monitor name to search for it on the Manage Monitors page. To find a Synthetic test monitor, filter on type:synthetics in the search bar. You can use monitor conditional variables to characterize the notification message based on test state.
The Synthetic test monitor integrates with notification channels such as email, Slack, Pagerduty, and Microsoft Teams. For more information, see Notifications.
If you have multiple layers of notifications (for example, notifying more teams the longer a Synthetic test is alerting), Datadog recommends enabling renotification on your Synthetic monitors.

Tailor monitor notifications

Depending on your incident management strategy, you may want to involve multiple teams when a Synthetic test alerts. To notify Team B only on subsequent alerts after the first alert, surround the notification to Team B with {{#is_renotify}} and {{/is_renotify}. Use conditional variables to further characterize the notification message based on monitor attributes.

Select the amount of time for the alerting monitor to renotify

To enable renotification, toggle Enable renotification and select a time interval from the dropdown menu.

Enhanced notifications

Use and enrich Synthetic monitors to send more detailed notifications when a Synthetic Monitoring test is failing. The following features are available:

Pre-filled monitor messages: Pre-filled monitor messages provide a structured starting point for Synthetic test alerts. Each message includes a standardized title, summary, and footer containing test metadata, making it easier to understand the alert at a glance.
Template variables: Template variables let you inject test-specific data into monitor notifications dynamically. These variables pull from the synthetics.attributes object.
Advanced usage: Advanced usage includes techniques for surfacing deeper test insights or structuring complex messages using handlebars templating.
Conditional alerting: Conditional alerting allows you to change the content of a monitor notification based on specific test results or failure conditions.

For more information, see Synthetic Monitoring notifications.

Best practices

Always include a default @notification (outside any conditions) to prevent dropped messages.
Avoid complex logic for paging tools like PagerDuty, which require consistent routing for recovery.
Use conditional logic to override alert text, change priority, or split notifications between teams.