This topic describes the configuration settings for Selenium monitors. You can change the monitoring locations, run interval, timeouts, and other settings.
Notes:
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You must be an Admin, Co-Admin, or Power User to change the monitor settings.
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It may take a few minutes for the changes to take effect.
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You can set the default settings for new monitors in > Settings > Preferences > Monitor Defaults in AlertSite UXM, or in Account > Manage Account in AlertSite 1.0.
Common
Name (or Site Name in AlertSite 1.0)
The monitor name that appears in dashboards and reports. For example, Customer Login.
Monitor ID (in AlertSite UXM)
Read-only. The monitor ID that can be used in AlertSite APIs.
Enable Monitoring (or Monitoring Is in AlertSite 1.0)
AlertSite UXM
On the Main tab, select or clear the Enable Monitoring check box to enable or disable monitoring.
AlertSite 1.0
Set Monitoring Is to Enabled to enable the monitor or Disabled to disable it.
Monitor ID (in AlertSite UXM)
Read-only. The monitor ID that can be used in AlertSite APIs.
Name (or Site Name in AlertSite 1.0)
The monitor name that appears in dashboards and reports. For example, Customer Login.
Enable alerting
AlertSite UXM
Enable availability or performance alerts on the Alerts tab.
AlertSite 1.0
Set Notify on Error to Yes to enable availability alerts for this monitor or No to disable availability alerts. Performance alerts are configured separately by clicking the Performance Alerts button in the top row.
Download Script (or Download JAR in AlertSite 1.0)
Click this button to download the JAR file used by this monitor. You can run it locally by using this command (provided that you have Java installed):
Upload Script (or Upload JAR in AlertSite 1.0)
Click this button to upload a new JAR file to replace the one currently used.
| Note: | After you upload a new JAR file, the monitor is automatically disabled. You need to run a successful test on demand before you can enable the monitor again. |
AlertSite UXM
Click to run a test on demand.
AlertSite 1.0
Click the Test On Demand button.
Custom Properties
This section shows custom properties defined for your monitor. You can select a value for each property from the predefined list.
Main
Basic
Measurement Plan (or Site Plan in AlertSite 1.0)
The monitoring plan used for this monitor.
Run Interval (Minutes) (or Check Every in AlertSite 1.0)
How often the monitor checks your website. Possible values depend on the Measurement Plan selected for this monitor.
Step Timeout (Seconds)
The timeout for each web page opened by this Selenium monitor. This is the full page timeout, that is, the time to load the page including all of the images, JavaScript, CSS, Ajax content, and other resources. If a page takes longer to load, it will have error status 7202 “Full page time out” in the reports.
| Note: | Timed out pages are indicated in run results but do not affect the overall monitor status (unless you designed your Selenium script to treat timeouts as errors). The monitor status (OK or error) is determined by the exit code of the JAR file. |
Monitor Note (or Device Note in AlertSite 1.0)
Leave a note for yourself or other users. Note text can be up to 1000 characters long. This note will appear on the AlertSite Dashboard when you hover over the icon. The note can also be included in alerts.
Monitoring
Monitoring Mode (or Monitoring Type in AlertSite 1.0)
The monitoring mode controls if locations check your website simultaneously or sequentially, and when they send alerts. See Monitoring Modes for possible values and details.
Rotate Locations
For each monitor, you define a location pool. Rotation means the monitor uses a subset of this location pool (say, 2 out of 10 locations) on every run, cycling through the locations. If rotation is not used, the monitor checks from all of its locations every time.
Notes:
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Rotated locations are not available for monitors that use Private Node Server locations (private monitoring stations installed on your local network).
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If your monitor uses both public and private locations, location rotation applies only to the public ones. Private locations will run in the configured intervals.
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The maximum number of locations for rotation is limited to the number of public locations.
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Usage-Based Monitoring plan allows rotated locations for the following monitoring modes: Round Robin, SLA (MultiPOP), Global Notify, and Global Verify.
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Legacy plans (Performance Pro, SLA) support rotating through locations only for the Round Robin and SLA (MultiPOP) modes.
Locations Per Run (or Locations per Interval in AlertSite 1.0)
If Rotate Locations is selected, you need to specify the number (subset) of public locations to use for each monitor run. This value ranges from 1 to the total number of locations you selected for the monitor.
If Monitoring Mode (or Monitoring Type in AlertSite 1.0) is Round Robin or SLA (MultiPOP), you need at least 2 locations per interval.
Enable Local Retry (or Disable Local Retry in AlertSite 1.0)
Used only for Usage-Based Monitoring plans. Controls the monitor behavior when it finds errors. Select this to retry the test from the same location to see if an error was just a temporary error. Clear (or select in AlertSite 1.0) to suppress the retry on errors. To learn more about that, see Local Retry and Global Verification.
| Note: | The retry consumes extra measurement credits. |
Allow AlertSite QA Testing (or Disallow AlertSite QA Testing in AlertSite 1.0)
Before releasing AlertSite updates, SmartBear runs regression tests to make sure that both existing and new functionality work correctly. Select (or clear in AlertSite 1.0) this check box to include your monitor in SmartBear regression testing, so we can make sure your monitors will work correctly after AlertSite updates. Participation is voluntary.
Capture
Capture Level
AlertSite can capture additional data about each web page used in your Selenium script. This includes:
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Web page screenshots.
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HTML source code of web pages.
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Request and response headers for all HTTP requests made during the page load (this includes the page itself, its images, scripts, Ajax requests, and so on).
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Selenium run log with the console output from the JAR file.
This option specifies the amount of extra data to capture:
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Disabled – Do not capture any extra data.
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Error Only – Default. Capture extra data only for web pages that have error status, such as page timeout.
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All Actions on Error – Capture extra data for all pages, but only if the monitor has error status.
Note: This option is only supported on Usage-Based Monitoring and consumes 0.5 measurement credits per web page capture. It is not supported for monitors that use private locations. -
All Actions – Capture extra data for all pages, even if there are no errors.
Note: This option is only supported on Usage-Based Monitoring and consumes 0.5 measurement credits per web page capture. It is not supported for monitors that use private locations.
You can access the captured data from the Monitors > Runs screen, using the corresponding buttons in the expand run results. You can also see the captures in the Detail report by clicking the 
camera icon.
| Tip: | You can also have the Selenium run log attached to email alerts if you configure alert recipients with the Attach server response to e-mail alerts option. This functionality does not depend on the monitor’ Capture Level. |
When a browser loads a web page, it fires events to notify about the page loading progress, such as:
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DOM Load (DOMContentLoaded) – the page’s HTML has been completely loaded and parsed, without waiting for stylesheets, images, and subframes to finish loading.
- Page Load (load) – the page is fully loaded with all images, styles, and other resources (except for Ajax and Flash content).
The browser timeout is the timeout to receive the DOM Load and Page Load events for a page. It is a “hard” timeout, meaning the Selenium script will be stopped if these events are not received within the timeout interval.
Fullpage Options
Object Timeout (seconds) (or Timeout Objects After in AlertSite 1.0)
The time it takes for AlertSite to wait for each page asset (image, JavaScript file, CSS file, and so on) to load before reporting an object loading timeout. This value must be less than or equal to Step Timeout.
Timed out objects do not affect the monitor OK or error status. They are only indicated in the reports by status 7002.
Advanced
Monitoring
Browser Version (or Playback Engine in AlertSite 1.0)
The Chrome version used to run this Selenium script at AlertSite global monitoring locations.
Possible values:
- Default – the default version is Chrome Driver 85
- Chrome Driver 74
- Chrome Driver 85
| Note: | Private Node Server locations ignore this option and use the locally installed Chrome version. |
Monitor Sharing
Locations
Select one or more locations to monitor you website from. For details, see Selecting Locations for Monitoring.
Blackouts
On this tab, you can view and edit monitor blackouts. Blackouts are time periods when the monitor either does not run or does not send alerts on errors. To learn how to create blackouts, see Scheduling Monitor Blackouts.
Existing blackouts are displayed in a table with the following columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
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Status |
The blackout status: Scheduled or Past. The column is shown if the Hide Past Blackouts check box is cleared. |
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Schedule |
The blackout date and time. |
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Type |
What is disabled during the blackout – the Monitor itself, or just Alerts from this monitor. |
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Note |
Optional blackout notes. For one-time blackouts only. |
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Created By |
The user who created this blackout. For one-time blackouts only. |
Click the image to enlarge it.
To filter out the blackouts, click the Filter by dropdown and select how to filter the blackouts:
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By scheduling frequency: recurring or one-time blackouts.
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By the blackout type: monitor or alert.
To remove expired blackouts from the blackouts table, select the Hide Past Blackouts check box.
Alerts
You can configure availability and performance alerts for the monitor. To receive alerts, you need to have alert recipients configured. By default, the monitor sends alerts to all configured recipients, but you can target alerts to specific recipients by selecting recipient groups for this monitor.
Recipient Groups (or Notifier Groups in AlertSite)
Select the recipient groups that will receive alerts from this monitor. The recipient groups must have been previously created in Alerts > Alert Recipients (or Notifiers > Notifier Groups in AlertSite 1.0).
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If the monitor is not assigned to any recipient group, it sends alerts to all the recipients configured in your AlertSite account. |
| Note: | Adding a monitor to the recipient group overrides any step-level associations for that recipient group. So if you want to add individual steps to a group, remove the monitor from that group first. |
Availability Alerts (or Notify on Error? in AlertSite 1.0)
Select this check box to send alerts when the monitor detects errors like HTTP errors, timeouts, or incorrect website content. The monitor status turns red in these cases.
Alert Notes
Monitor-specific notes that can be included in email and JSON alerts (availability alerts only), up to 1000 characters long. To add these notes to alerts, you need to configure alert templates to include the $ALERT_NOTE variable. For details, see Adding Monitor-Specific Notes to Alerts.
Performance Alerts
Enable performance alerts if you wish to be notified when the monitor response time exceeds the specified value. See Performance Alerts for a description of available settings and to learn how to set up these alerts.
Notes:
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In AlertSite 1.0, click the Performance Alerts button in the top left corner of the monitor configuration screen to view or change the performance alert settings.
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For multi-step monitors, the response time thresholds should include the total response time for all test steps.
See Also
Website Monitoring With Selenium and AlertSite
Selenium Monitors