Name: Understanding Synthetic Monitoring in Dynatrace for SAP Commerce Cloud
Uploaded: 2024-4-8
Duration: 460 s
Description: In this video, you will learn about Synthetic Monitoring, a way of monitoring a web application’s performance using Dynatrace by imitating the flows a user may follow.

Share feedback

<p>Planned maintenance of Practice Systems</p>

Planned maintenance of Practice Systems

Why create an SAP account?

Enhance your learning experience

SAP Learning

Subscribe now

Learn more

Live Sessions

Hands-on Practice

Certification

My Learning

Ready to start learning?

<div><div><div><div>In this video, you will learn about Synthetic Monitoring, a way of monitoring a web application’s performance using Dynatrace by imitating the flows a user may follow.</div></div></div></div>

Understanding Synthetic Monitoring in Dynatrace for SAP Commerce Cloud

Hello, in this session we will have a look at synthetic monitoring for commerce cloud using Dynatrace. Synthetic monitoring is a way of monitoring a web application's performance using Dynatrace by imitating the flows a user may follow. It allows us to check the performance of various parts of the application, such as home page, search results page, category and product pages, as well as business flows, for example checking a particular product regarding its details, adding it to the cart, even all the way to placing an order to complete a checkout journey. Furthermore, synthetic monitoring allows us to initiate search requests from various locations across the globe. For example, we can easily simulate accessing a commerce storefront from the US, UK, Germany, India, Australia or any other location. That way, we can get detailed storefront performance data resulting from different geo-locations and take corrective actions if necessary. Please note that synthetic monitoring is available for purchase from the SAP Store as an SAP Commerce add-on along with digital experience monitoring. This is a 12-month subscription service that provides a certain number of digital experience monitoring points. The DEM points consumption depends on the monitoring configuration. We will discuss this further during our demo. Let's get started. Open the Dynatrace UI for the selected environment and go to Application Observability and click on the Synthetic node. This brings up the workspace page for synthetic monitoring. You can define synthetic monitoring by clicking on the Create a Synthetic Monitor button. There are two types of synthetic monitors, browser monitor and HTTP monitor. A browser monitor allows us to simulate a user journey for purchasing a product using the web application by capturing a complete session's interactions. It allows detailed configuration by selecting a particular client device type such as a desktop, mobile, tablet or other factors such as available bandwidth, user agent, etc. Click on the Create a browser monitor button. Enter the storefront URL and a name for the browser monitor. For this demo, I will use the apparel storefront. I will use the default configuration for the parameters. I'll need to record the click path events. The easier way is to use the Record Click Path button. This way the events can be recorded automatically via interaction with the application. The more complicated but more flexible way is to add click path events manually. Provide category page as the name and click Add Synthetic Event. Enter the URL for the category page. Add one more synthetic event for the PDP page. You can select the synthetic monitor execution frequency and multiple locations on this page. I will set the frequency to every 4 hours and Mumbai and Sydney as the locations. Configure these according to the actual locations where customer traffic is expected to originate. Proceed to the next page. The summary page provides an overview of the configuration. Please note that the monitoring frequency and number of locations directly impact the DEM consumption. Click on Create Browser Monitor. Setting up the browser monitor takes a few moments as Dynatrace creates the monitoring agents in the selected data centers. It will take some time to execute the user journey, collect data from all the locations and present it on this page. The top section provides an overview of the performance data, including availability, number of locations, screenshots of the pages browsed and page load duration. Clicking on the Performance button moves the focus to the performance chart depicting page load performance, segregated at page level. The Synthetic Events section provides insights on the configured events. Click on the arrow button to view detailed information. Synthetic monitoring will record any problems a monitor execution may encounter. These can be viewed in the Problems area. The Errors section shows the errors captured during execution. For these cases, the Analyze Errors button is displayed here. It provides a convenient way to start multidimensional error analysis. The World Map section highlights the locations configured for our monitor. The monitored application section shows details of our application. I can get further insights on the application by clicking this link. This synthetic sessions button opens the user sessions page. I can use various filters to view a subset of sessions for further analysis. Now let's move to creating a synthetic HTTP monitor. Click on the create HTTP monitor button. button. Provide a name for the HTTP monitor. I will enter Electronic Store HTTP Monitor. Click on Add HTTP Request. I can create either an HTTP request or an OAuth request. Paste the storefront URL. Change the name to Electronic Storefront. It allows creation of all the supported HTTP request types. I will continue by choosing the GET request. I can add multiple HTTP requests to monitor access to various paths or API endpoints. I will add one more request to monitor the search performance. Click Next. Again, I can select the execution frequency and multiple locations on this page. I will set the frequency to On Demand Only and Berlin and Singapore as the locations. Clicking Next displays the summary page. Click on Create HTTP Monitor. The new synthetic monitor will be set up in a short while. Let's trigger our HTTP monitor. An HTTP monitor is lightweight compared to a browser monitor. Though its overview page layout looks similar to that of a browser monitor page, it captures less information. For example, user action duration, time to first byte, isn't displayed. Because of this, it consumes fewer DEM points. Next, I will take you through the flow for updating existing monitors. Click on the link to one of the monitors. If I click on the Edit button, I can modify any configuration for this monitor. Once all the changes have been entered, I can click the Save Changes button to save them. I can also perform bulk actions on multiple synthetic monitors by selecting the checkboxes beside them. Any unused monitors can be deleted in a single operation. This completes our session on synthetic monitoring. Thanks for watching!