If you experience issues setting up or configuring Datadog Synthetic Monitoring, use this information to begin troubleshooting. If you continue to have trouble, contact Datadog’s support team.
After downloading the Datadog extension, you are unable to see your website in the iframe on the right side of your Browser test’s recorder. Additionally, you cannot record any steps, regardless of whether you open your website in the iframe or in a pop up:
If that happens, ensure the Datadog extension has the permissions to read and change data on the intended websites by specifying your website in the On specific sites section or by toggling On all sites:
By default, the iframe/pop up of the recorder uses your own browser. This means that if you’re already logged into your application, the iframe/pop up might directly display a post login page, therefore preventing you from recording your login steps without logging out first.
To be able to record your steps without logging out from your application, just leverage the recorder’s incognito mode:
Opening a pop up in incognito mode allows you to start your test’s recording from the start URL set in your test configuration with a session completely isolated from your own browser’s main session and user data.
The freshly opened incognito pop up ignores all your previous browser history: cookies, local data, etc. You are consequently automatically logged out from your account and can start recording your login steps as if you were visiting your website for the first time.
If your website is using responsive techniques, its DOM might differ a lot depending on the device your test is running on. It might use a specific DOM when running from a Laptop Large, and have a very different architecture when running from a Tablet or a Mobile Small.
This means that the steps you recorded from a Laptop Large viewport might not be applicable to the same website accessed from a Mobile Small, causing your Mobile Small test results to fail:
For these types of cases, Datadog recommends creating separate Mobile Small or Tablet specific tests where the recorded steps match the viewport your test is set to at runtime.
To record steps with a Mobile Small or Tablet viewport, selecting Mobile Small or Tablet in the recorder dropdown before hitting the Start Recording button.
Additionally, Datadog’s test browsers run in headless, meaning Browser tests do not support some features. For example, Browser tests do not support touch and cannot use touch to detect whether the website should appear with its mobile design.
None or multiple elements detected step warningOne of your Browser test steps is showing a None or multiple elements detected step warning:
This means that the user locator defined for that step is either targeting several elements, or none of them, consequently preventing the Browser test from knowing which element needs to be interacted with.
To fix it, go edit your recording, open the advanced options of the step that is having the issue, go to the page the step is testing, and click on Test. This highlights the located element or prints an error message. You can then go ahead and fix your user locator to have it match a single element of the page:
If one of your Synthetic tests is throwing a 401, it most likely means that it is unable to authenticate on the endpoint. You should use the method that you use to authenticate on that endpoint (outside of Datadog) and replicate it when configuring your Synthetic test.
Is your endpoint using header-based authentication?
Is this endpoint using query parameters for authentication (e.g. do you need to add a specific API key in your URL parameters?)
Is this endpoint using IP-based authentication? If so, you might need to allow part or all of the IPs from which Synthetic tests originate.
If you observe 403 Forbidden errors returned by Synthetic tests, it may be the result of your web server blocking or filtering requests that include the Sec-Datadog header. This header is added to each Synthetic request Datadog initiates to identify the source of the traffic and assist Datadog support in identifying the specific test execution.
Additionally, you might also have to ensure Datadog Synthetic Monitoring IP ranges are allowed as traffic sources by your firewalls.
Synthetic tests by default do not renotify. This means that if you add your notification handle (email address, Slack handle, etc.) after a transition got generated (e.g., test going into alert or recovering from a previous alert), no notification is sent for that very transition. A notification will be sent for the next transition.
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
