Use Synthetic Test 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 cannot create or import a Synthetic test monitor in Monitors.

Create a monitor in the Configure the monitor for this test section to send notifications when a Synthetic 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.

Creating a monitor in your Synthetic test

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 the alerting monitor to renotify, click the toggle left of If this monitor stays in alert status renotify every and select a time option from the dropdown menu.

Integrate your Synthetic test monitor with Statuspage

If you use Atlassian Statuspage for visibility into your applications’ and services’ uptime, you can update the status of your systems with Synthetic test monitor notifications.

Add a Statuspage email address and status to the monitor name in your Synthetic test
  1. See the Statuspage documentation to generate a component-specific email address.
  2. Add the generated email address into your test’s notification message. For example, @custom-statuspage-email@notifications.statuspage.io.
  3. Customize the monitor name to return UP or DOWN depending on the test state. For example, {{#is_alert}}DOWN{{/is_alert}}{{#is_recovery}}UP{{/is_recovery}}.
  4. Fill out the monitor notification section and add a summary in the monitor name. For example, Shopist Checkout Functionality.
  5. Once you have configured your monitor, click Save & Exit.

For more information, see Integrating Monitors with Statuspage.

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Learn how to manage monitorsDOCUMENTATION more more Learn how to integrate monitors with StatuspageDOCUMENTATION more more Learn about Synthetic Monitoring metricsDOCUMENTATION more more