Web Transaction

Web Transaction monitor uses a transaction recorder to record and monitor the sequence of web pages of an online application such as online shopping cart or a banking transaction. You can customize your location profiles to facilitate monitoring from over 120+ global locations as well as from behind your firewall using an on-premise poller. You can get instant notifications relating to any database problems, page load time or even content errors. Now you can also monitor your IPv4/IPv6 based infrastructure with Site24x7.

How it Works

Site24x7 provides a downloadable transaction tool that can be used to record all user steps in your web application in their exact sequence. These transaction will then get replayed at regular intervals of time and notifications will be sent when any error is detected. Typical user transactions include login checks, online purchase through shopping carts, any sort of online form submission, sign-up processes, etc. Every step of the transaction will be captured and recorded. Site24x7 will then keep simulating these actions continuously, scanning for any sign of trouble. You also can modify or edit your transactions at a later point of time.

Download and Install Site24x7 Transaction Recorder

1. Select Admin > Inventory > Monitors > Add Monitor.
2. Select Web Transaction from Add Monitor page.
3. You will be navigated to Web Transaction screen.
4. Click the Recorder for Windows button to download the Transaction Recorder Tool. 
5. After you download it, click the Recorder link and select Run to run the file in your system.
6. To access the Site24x7 Recorder tool, click Start Menu > All Programs > Site24x7 Recorder.

Record a New Web Transaction with Transaction Recorder

1. Click New to start a new recording.
2. Enter the URL of the application you wish to monitor.
   
3. Browse through the required steps in your application to record the transaction and click Preview & Save.
4. A dialog box appears which will prompt you to enter the Site24x7 login credentials.
   Using Site24x7 login credentials, authentication token can be used from Site24x7 API.
   
5. Click Login once you have entered your Device Key.
6. The Preview transaction screen appears where the following actions can be performed:
   • Filter URL: You can remove unwanted URL from your transaction.
   • Move Up / Move Down: You can alter the sequence of the recorded transaction.
   • Delete URL: You can delete unwanted URL from your transaction.
   • Basic: Review and modify the description of the URL, step name of the URL and parameters of the URL. this can be done for all individual transaction steps.
      
   • Advanced: Enter the alert configuration for content match and basic authentication details.
     For Content Match, specify the following details:
     • Check for keyword presence in the response: Get alerted when the specified keywords are not present in the website. Mention the keywords in the check box and use the slider button to trigger the required kind of alert.
     • Check for non existence of the keyword in the response: Get alerted when the specified keywords are present in the website content. Mention the keywords in the check box and use the slider button to trigger the required kind of alert.
       
       You must adhere to the following conditions while adding keywords in the given field:
       

       • A single string or keyword can be configured with/without any double quotes (ex: HTML).
       • If there are two strings, which comprise a single keyword–add a space in between the two strings and enclose it with double quotes. (ex: "HTML response").
       • In case you have more than a couple of individual keywords configured, you will have to separate them with a space and also use double quotes for each of them. ("monitor" "HTML").
     • Basic Authentication Details: Enter your Site24x7 username and password.
       
7. Select the location profile from the dropdown list to choose the location for your transaction. The primary and secondary locations selected for the chosen location profile will be displayed. Learn more about location profile.
    
8. Edit and enter the field in Save Transaction screen and click Save to submit the transaction to your Site24x7 account. 
    

Modify the Saved Web Transaction

1. After invoking the transaction tool, click the Re-Record button
   
2. To re-record the transaction, browse through the required steps in your application and click Preview & Save.
3. Enter the login details and click Next.
4. In the Preview transaction screen, click Next to proceed to Update Transaction screen. 
5. Select a transaction to update from the drop down and click Fetch Steps. This will list the existing URLs in the transaction.
   
6. Click Next and you can see the existing list of URLs and the new set of URLs.
7. Update to overwrite the existing with the new set of URLs.

Edit/Modify Existing Web Transaction

1. Enter an appropriate display name for the added monitor.
   
2. Select the required step to modify any step in your transaction.
   • Specify the following Step Details:
     
     • Display Name: Edit the display name for the transaction step.
     • Severity: Use the toggle to set the severity status as Critical or Non Critical.
     • Website Address: Edit the website address.
     • Timeout: Specify time in seconds the connection need to establish with the target server. When time exceeds, the DNS server will report a "Connection Error". 
   • Specify the following details for Content Match:
     • Check for keyword presence in the response: Get alerted when the specified keywords are not present in the website. Mention the keywords in the check box and use the slider button to trigger the required kind of alert.
     • Check for non existence of the keyword in the response: Get alerted when the specified keywords are present in the website content. Mention the keywords in the check box and use the slider button to trigger the required kind of alert.
       
       You must adhere to the following conditions while adding keywords in the given field:
       

       • A single string or keyword can be configured with/without any double quotes (ex: HTML).
       • If there are two strings, which comprise a single keyword–add a space in between the two strings and enclose it with double quotes. (ex: "HTML response").
       • In case you have more than a couple of individual keywords configured, you will have to separate them with a space and also use double quotes for each of them. ("monitor" "HTML").
     • Do case sensitive keyword search: Enable the toggle button for this option
     • Match the given regular expression in the response: Configure your alert based on whether a particular pattern matches with the website content. For example when you consider the expression ^[a-z0-9_-]{3,15}$, your website content should contain alphabets from a to z,numbers from 0 to 9 , underscore and a hyphen. Also there should be minimum length of 3 characters and maximum length of 15 characters. When it is not matched, your website will be reported as "Regular expression"^[a-z0-9_-]{3,15}$" does not match" as a reason.
     • Learn more about Content Checks.
   • Specify the required details for HTTP Configuration:
     • HTTP Method: Specify the method to be used for connecting with the site– GET, HEAD or POST. Select the radio buttons to configure the form submission method and appropriate body type for the POST HTTP Method.
       
       In the HEAD method, you'll be able to check the availability of the URL.
       
       
       In the GET method, the entire HTML response is fetched and checked for the presence of your configured keywords.
       
       
       POST method would submit the parameters to access the URL.
     • Force IP addresses: You can provide a list of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses to be used instead of the DNS resolved addresses.
       
       You must enter one IPv4 or IPv6 address per line, in order of preference.
     • Click Save.
3. Modify the following details to edit the Web Transaction:
   • Check Frequency: Define your monitoring poll interval.
   • Prefer IPv6: If you want to monitor your Web Transaction over IPv6 enabled locations, simply move the rocker button to "YES" when creating or editing a monitor form.
     
     • Site24x7 lets you monitor your dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 based infrastructure as per you need. IPv4 will be enabled as the default protocol. You'll be able to monitor your IPv6 infrastructure, once you enable the rocker button to IPv6. If the connectivity over IPv6 fails, it will not fall back to IPv4 automatically. Read more.
     • Enabling IPv6 in the monitoring form doesn't make it compatible to monitor IPv4, by default. If you want to monitor a resource, which is compatible with both IPv4 and IPv6–you'll have to set up two separate monitor checks for this.
   • Monitoring Locations: Choose a global location profile from the dropdown list to setup monitoring of your resource from these locations. You can either pick IPv4/ IPv6 enabled location or choose your configured on-premise poller in the drop-down list as your monitoring location. Additionally, customize and create location profiles based on your requirements.
     To know more, refer Location Profile.
     
   • Associate with Monitor Group: You can associate your monitor with multiple monitor groups by selecting the relevant monitor groups from the drop down list. This allows in logical grouping of your monitors. 
     To learn how to create a monitor group for your monitors, refer Monitor Groups.
   • Dependent on monitor: Select a monitor from the drop-down list to choose it as your dependent resource. Alerts to your monitor will be suppressed based on the DOWN status of your dependent resource.
     
     Configuring a dependent resource and suppressing alerts based on the dependent resource's status is part of providing you with better false alerts protection. Learn more about alert suppression at monitor level.
     
     
     If you select "None" in the dependent resource field, alerting will progress as per your normal configuration settings. No alerts will be suppressed in this case as the monitor doesn't have any dependent resource.
     
     
     Multiple monitor group support for monitors allow a monitor to be associated with multiple dependent resources in different monitor groups. If during a normal monitor status check, any one of these dependent resources' status is identified as DOWN, the alert for the monitor will be automatically suppressed. However, the dependency configuration at monitor level is always given the higher priority over any other monitor group level dependency configuration for suppressing alerts.
4. Specify the following details for HTTP configuration:
   • Authentication credentials (Basic/ NTLM): Provide the Username and Password for URLs requiring Form-based authentication.
   • Use Authoritative NameServer for resolving IP Address: Use the toggle button to decide if you want to resolve your domain name by an authoritative name server.
     
   • Set additional HTTP Headers: Sometimes you might want to customize the default HTTP request header information. In such cases, the additional header name and header value can be added here.
   • Set User Agent: Set customized user agent (web browser) for sending your request and the HTTP headers. You can choose from the available user agents.
   
5. Specify the following details for Configuration Profiles:
   • Threshold and Availability: Select a threshold profile from the drop down list or choose the default threshold set available and get notified when the resources cross the configured threshold and availability.
     To create a customized threshold and availability profile, refer Threshold and Availability.
   • Tags: Associate your monitor with predefined Tag(s) to help organize and manage your monitors creatively. Learn how to add Tags.
   • IT Automation: Select an automation to be executed when the website is down/trouble/up/any status change/any attribute change. The defined action gets executed when there is a state change and selected user groups are alerted.
     To automate corrective actions on failure, refer IT Automation.
     

6. Specify the following details for Alert Settings:

   • Notification Profile: Choose a notification profile from the drop down or select the default profile available. Notification profile helps to configure when and who needs to be notifed in case of downtime.
     Refer Notification Profile to create a customized notification profile.
   • User Alert Group: Select the user group that need to be alerted during a outage.
     To add multiple users in a group, see User Groups.
   • On-Call Schedule: The On-Call Schedule option helps you to ensure that the notifications are sent to assignees in specific shift hours helping them to quickly respond to alerts or incidents. Choose an On-Call of your preference from the drop-down. 
   You can receive alerts if the monitors are associated to user groups irrespective of the On-Call shift you've configured.
7. Third Party Integrations: Associate your monitor with a pre-configured third-party service. It lets you push your monitor alarms to selected services and facilitate improved incident management.
   
   If you haven't setup any integrations yet, navigate across to ”Admin > Third Party Integration” to create one. Tell me more.
8. Click Save.

Clone Web Transaction Monitor

You can replicate an existing Web Transaction monitor with all the configuration settings using the Clone Web Transaction option in Site24x7. During the clone process, you can modify your Monitor configuration to fit your needs. Follow the instructions listed below to successfully clone a Web Transaction Monitor:

• Login to Site24x7
• Acess Admin > Inventory > Monitors
• Select the Web Transaction Monitor that you wish to clone from the Monitor List. Now, hover over the  icon and click Clone.
  
• Now you will be redirected to the Add Web Transaction page of the cloned monitor. You can make necessary changes to the Step Details, Content Checks, and HTTP Configuration settings of your individual URL(s), under each Transaction step(s). You must Save individual transactions separately. You can also Delete a certain step URL, under a transaction. 
  
• Once the individual transaction step settings are modified, you can go ahead and change the overall HTTP Configuration, Threshold changes, and Third Party Integration settings in the Add Monitor form.
• Click the Save button to successfully clone the Web Transaction Monitor.