SiteScope User's Guide

Editing URL Sequence Monitors

The Edit URL Sequence Monitor Form is used for making changes to existing URL Sequence Monitors. To display the URL Sequence Monitor Form, click the Edit link of an existing URL Sequence Monitor in a monitor table or by clicking the Wizard button available via the Tools link associated with an existing URL Sequence monitor.

A URL Sequence begins with a specific URL acting as the starting point for the sequence. This can then be followed by additional URLs, links, or form buttons that a user would be required to select in order to complete a specific transaction. SiteScope allows you to define up to twenty transaction steps. Each step in the existing URL Sequence is displayed in the upper portion of the Edit URL Sequence Monitor form. The steps are described by a type and a reference.

You change a content match, define an error content match, enter a user name and password if required, define custom POST data, as well as other optional criteria for each step in the Advanced Options section in the lower portion of the form.

Editing the URL Sequence

Complete the items on the URL Sequence Monitor form as follows. Because the items are the same for each of the steps, each item will only be documented once. When the required items are complete, click the Update Monitor button.

Step n Type

Choose the type of item that the Reference represents.

Step n Reference

Enter the URL that you want to monitor (for example, http://demo.thiscompany.com). In some cases you may want to include retained values from a content match on a previous step in the sequence.

The URL type is a full or relative URL. The first step is always a full URL. Relative URLs will be relative to the previous transaction step. If the URL starts with HTTPS, then a secure connection can be made using SSL (for example, https://www.thiscompany.com). SiteScope uses Java SSL libraries by default for secure connections. Additional set up steps may be required.

Notes for NT only:: 1. If the Advanced Option "NT Challenge Response" is checked, SiteScope for NT uses the SSL library from Internet Explorer. To monitor using SSL, installing Internet Explorer 4.0 or later is recommended.
2. To monitor sites that require 128-bit SSL, the 128-bit patch to Internet Explorer must be installed.
3. To monitor sites that require client certificates, the client certificate must be installed into Internet Explorer.>

The Form type is the name of a Submit or Image button on the form. Enter either the displayed text of the button, or the name of the submit or image input item specified in the HTML. The match is case-sensitive. See the POST Data documentation below for more information about how form data is sent by the URL Sequence Monitor.

The Link type is the contents of a link. Enter the text that will match the contents of the link on the subject page.

The Frame type is the name of a frame. Enter text that will match the frame name (in the HTML).

The Refresh type URL in a HTML meta refresh tag. Enter text that will match the URL of the refresh in the META tag set.

The XML type is the name of an XML value. Enter the name of an XML value that will match a value in the XML document.

Each step of a URL sequence is listed in type-reference pairs. By default, SiteScope displays two additional type-reference pairs on the form that allows you to extend the current transaction by defining additional steps. The following two inputs apply to the entire transaction.

Update every: Enter how frequently the monitor should check this URL. The drop-down list to the right of the text box lets you specify time increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. You must specify a time increment of at least 15 seconds.
Title: Enter the text for the title of this monitor that will be displayed in the SiteScope Monitor Detail Table. This text entry has precedence over any other title text entered in the Add URL Sequence Monitor wizard

Advanced Options

The advanced options give you the ability to customize error and warning thresholds, or complete optional settings. These settings are displayed for each step that is defined in the sequence. This allows you to make changes to match content expressions or POST data on previous steps if the request did not return the result that you wanted.

Disable: Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Like the sequence step type-reference pairs displayed in the upper portion of the form, the Advanced Options section displays the list of options for each step. Each step includes:

Step n POST Data
Step n Match Content
Step n Error If Match
Step n User Name
Step n Password
Step n Delay
Step n Title

The following describes these options:

Step n POST Data: If the URL at this step is for a POST request, enter the post variables, one per line as name=value pairs. This option is used to verify that a form is working correctly by performing the same request that occurs when a user submits a form. This item is most commonly used with the Form Reference Type. When the form is submitted, SiteScope fills in any fields that aren't specified with data here with the same defaults as a browser would have chosen.
Step n Match Content: Enter a string of text to check for in the returned page for this step. If the text is not contained in the page, the monitor will display no match on content for this step's URL. The search is case sensitive. Remember that HTML tags are part of a text document, so include the HTML tags if they are part of the text you are searching for (for example, "<B> Hello</B> World"). You may also perform a Perl regular expression match by enclosing the string in forward slashes, with an i after the trailing slash indicating case-insensitive matching. (for example, /href=Doc\d+\.html/ or /href=doc\d+\.html/i).
Step n Error If Match: Enter a string of text to check for in the returned page for this step. If the text is contained in the page, the monitor will display no match on content for this step's URL. The search is case sensitive. Remember that HTML tags are part of a text document, so include the HTML tags if they are part of the text you are searching for (for example, "<B> Error </B> Message"). You may also perform a Perl regular expression match by enclosing the string in forward slashes, with an i after the trailing slash indicating case-insensitive matching. (for example, /href=Doc\d+\.html/ or /href=doc\d+\.html/i).
Step n User Name: If the URL specified at this step requires a name and password for access, enter the name in this box.
Step n Password: If the URL specified at this step requires a name and password for access, enter the password in this box.
Step n Delay: (Optional) Enter how long SiteScope should wait before executing the next step of the sequence.
Step n Title: (Optional) Enter the text for the title of this step within the sequence monitor. The title will only be displayed in the Edit URL Sequence form.

The advanced options for each step of a URL sequence are listed in sequential groups. As with the type-reference pairs above, SiteScope displays two additional sets of advanced options on the form that allows you to define these options for any additional steps. The following advanced options apply to the entire transaction.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

This options allows you to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule (Optional)

By default, SiteScope's monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Choose the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For information about creating schedules, read these instructions.

Monitor Description (Optional)

Enter additional information about this monitor. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description (Optional)

Enter a description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what this monitor does. The description will appear on Management Reports and on the info list for a monitor.

Timeout

The number of seconds that the URL Sequence Monitor should wait for the entire transaction to complete before timing-out. Once this time period passes, the URL Sequence Monitor will log an error and report an error status.

Timeout is per Step

Check this box if you want to use the value entered for the Timeout above as the Timeout for each step of the sequence rather than for the entire transaction. If the step takes more than this time to complete, the URL Sequence Monitor will log an error and report an error status.

HTTP Proxy

Optionally, a proxy server can be used to access the URLs in the sequence. Enter the domain name and port of an HTTP Proxy Server.

Retrieve Images

Check this box if you want the monitor to retrieve all of the graphics embedded in the pages of the sequence. The image retrieval time will be added to the total response time.

Retrieve Frames

Check this box if you want the monitor to retrieve the content of all frames related to the pages of the sequence. The frame retrieval time will be added to the total response time..

Proxy Server User Name

If the proxy server requires a name and password to access the URLs in the sequence, enter the name here. Technical note: your proxy server must support Proxy-Authenticate for these options to function.

Proxy Server Password

If the proxy server requires a name and password to access the URLs in the sequence, enter the password here. Technical note: your proxy server must support Proxy-Authenticate for these options to function.

NT Challenge Response

Check this box if you want SiteScope to use Window's NT Challenge Response when retrieving this URL sequence.

List Order (Optional)

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Error if

By default, SiteScope generates an error if the returned status for any step is anything other than 200 which indicates a successful retrieval. You may choose to have SiteScope generate an error based on the round trip retrieval time. Enter the shortest retrieval time (in milliseconds) that should generate an error. Enter a comparison value and use the comparison operator list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than).

Warning if

By default, SiteScope does not generate warnings for URL Sequence Monitors. You may choose to generate a warning based on round trip retrieval time. Enter the shortest retrieval time (in milliseconds) that should generate a warning.

Good if

You can base a good status on the round-trip time for any one step if you would like. Choose the step from the drop-down list and set the threshold.