Web Transaction Monitoring

Testing Features

• Test Multi-step Web Processes

  This feature allows you to test any sequence of clicks and interactions with your website across multiple pages. For example, you can create a test script which starts at your homepage, and then click the search link on your menu. Once the search form loads, you can then have the test script type in the search string. Once the search results load, you can have the test script select a search result from the list. Once that page loads, you can interact with another link on the page, or form, video, flash, etc. The possibilities are endless. The bottom line is we can test any sequence of interactions that any real user could perform on your website.

• Test Customer Login Areas

  We support the ability for you to test the functionality of a customer-only area of your website. This includes testing the new user registration process as well as testing the existing user login process and the various pages in the member's area. Since configuring these tests can often be complicated, we work with you one-on-one to setup these types of tests.

• Test Shopping Carts

  We support the ability for you to test the functionality of a shopping cart and checkout process on your e-commerce website. We can test things like add-to-cart buttons, view-cart buttons, checkout buttons, new customer registration forms, and many other parts of an ecommerce website. Since configuring these tests can often be complicated, we work with you one-on-one to setup these types of tests.

• Test Rich Internet Applications

  We are able to load and interact with Rich Internet Applications (RIA). This is crucial for testing multiple step processes that include technologies like AJAX, Flash, Flex, and Silverlight.

• Test Page Responses

  As part of our testing procedure, we will send your web server requests for each of the page in your multi-step test script. We then wait for the server to respond with an indication that each page has been processed successfully and is ready for download. If the server does not respond to this request, or does not complete its processing within a configurable time limit, we deem the test to have failed

• Test JavaScript, VBScript, and AJAX

  We will load and run all JavaScript, VBScript, AJAX, Flash, Flex and Silverlight code on your page, just as it would for real users. This includes executing all user events including events such as OnClick, OnMouseOver, OnFocus events and much more.

• Test HTTP Headers

  As part of our testing procedure, we analyze the HTTP headers we receive back from your web server to ensure they are standards compliant and indicate a successful response. If the headers don't meet standards or return a status code indicating a failure, we will deem the test as failed.

• Download Page Content

  As part of our testing procedure, we download the HTML content of your page and verify that the transmission of that content is error free. During that transmission process, we also measure your network's transfer rate. If the entire content of your page is not downloaded within a configurable time limit, the test is deemed to have failed.

• Download All Media Files

  As part of our testing, we download all of your pages images, cascading style sheets, JavaScript, videos, and all other file types used for rendering your pages.

• Verify Content On Page

  As part of our testing procedure, we will verify one or more specific piece of text (that you predefine) is contained on your web pages. This is a very important feature. We recommend all customers use this feature to ensure the content they expect to be on the page is in fact there. It is common for web sites (a.k.a. web applications) to fail and not give any signs of the failure except that the expected content is missing. This issue has a great deal to do with how the website is programmed to handle failures. For this reason, we highly recommend that our customers use this feature to verify the content on the page.

• Test Form Submission

  This feature allows you to submit an HTML form and test the resulting page to make sure it is responding correctly. You can use this feature to test things like sign up forms, website search forms, information collection forms, payment submission forms, and shopping cart forms.

• Test SSL Security

  If your web site is running SSL security, we will validate your SSL certificate and attempt to establish an encrypted connection with your server. Our test performs real-user interactions with your server to detect any possible problems with the SSL certificate and connection. If any problems are detected, the test is deemed to have failed with an SSL class error code.

• Multiple Browser Testing

  Our system allows you to select the browser you want us to simulate when performing the tests against your server. This allows you to uniquely identify which web browser (for example: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Apple Safari) and which version of the web browser (i.e. v8.0, v3.5, etc.) you want to simulate. You can then configure multiple Test Profiles to perform the same test against your website using a collection of different web browsers.

• Run Multiple Test Scenarios

  You can use our Test Profiles feature to run multiple test scenarios against your website. For example, you can test both SSL & non-SSL, multiple domain names for the same website, multiple form input variations, different pieces of content, and different browsers. Your monitor will cycle through each of these scenarios in a round robin fashion (testing one scenario per test time). For best results, this feature should only be used to test website components that rely on the same backend server, application code and database. To test different websites, a new monitor should be created for each.

• Real User Simulation

  As part of our testing procedure we simulate all the interactions that a real user would have with your website. This includes adhering to all the HTTP and HTML standards that normal web browsers use. In doing so, your web server cannot tell the difference between AlertBot and a real user. This level of testing allows us to accurately measure performance and detect all failures that your users could be experiencing.

• Cookie Support

  AlertBot will accept all cookies that your website sends to it during the testing process and resends those cookies back to your server during each subsequent page request. This allows us to accurately simulate the user experience and detect any possible errors that might arise. It also ensures full compliance with the HTTP protocol.

• Test Network Connectivity

  As part of our testing procedure, we verify that the network connectivity to your server is open and performing. Before we test your website itself, we perform an advanced TCP/IP connectivity test that measures the response time of your network. We feel it is just as important to know how your network is performing as it is to know how your website is performing.

• Test DNS

  As part of our testing procedure, we verify that your DNS configuration and servers are working properly. Before we test your website, we analyze the DNS response at the perimeter of the network to verify that your DNS records are being distributed across the internet and cached on remote DNS servers effectively. This system of DNS distribution must be functioning properly for people to access your website using your domain name (ex. http://www.mysite.com).

• Test Ping Response

  As part of our testing procedure, we send out a Ping to your server to measure its responsiveness on the network. We then save this ping data and make it available to you in performance reports. These performance reports allow you to see trends and patterns of network performance over time.

• Test TCP and Port Response

  As part of our testing procedure, we verify that the TCP-layer of your network is operational. We do this by making a TCP connection to an open port on your server and verifying that the TCP handshake is successful.

• Test From Geographic Locations

  By default, all accounts are tested from multiple test locations in our core network. Monitoring from multiple geographic regions allows you to measure how your website is performing for users in those different regions.

Error Detection & Alerting Features

• Screenshots of Page Errors

  This feature gives you the ability to view webpage errors exactly as users would see them if they visited your site during a website failure. Every time a failure is detected with your website, we immediately take a screenshot of the HTML page that is displaying the error and store it for you. You can then login to our reporting section at any time and view these screenshots. These screenshots become particularly invaluable when troubleshooting intermittent and illusive website failures.

• Uniquely Identifies Errors

  AlertBot is designed to be as specific as possible when diagnosing problems with your website or server. Our system is able to identify many unique error signatures and report them to you by name. This helps you diagnose problems quickly and more efficiently when you receive a failure alert.

• On Error Diagnostics

  When we detect a problem with your website, we immediately take appropriate measures to validate and diagnose the error. The first thing we do is immediately retest your website from a different geographic location to validate that there is an actual problem with your website and not just a false alarm. We then perform an advanced TCP/IP test that helps identify problems with routers, network equipment, and NIC cards connected to your server. We continue our diagnostics by validating the response of the web applications running on your server. We then attempt to capture and uniquely identify the errors your web server is throwing. These are just a few of the many diagnostics we perform to troubleshoot your website problems.

• Advanced False Alert Protection

  One of the most important features of our system is its advanced false alert protection. No one likes to be alerted and have it turn out to be a false alarm (particularly in the middle of the night). AlertBot goes to great lengths to protect against false alerts. One of the key processes we use to protect against false alerts is that we verify failures from multiple independent test stations located in completely different geographic regions. We then compare the results from these locations and only classify the failure as valid if it's corroborated by each of the other test locations. This ensures you're not bothered with an alert unless it's truly a problem with your network.

• Contact Escalation at Error Stages

  Contact escalation lets you configure the time each contact should be alerted during the course of a web site or server failure. For example, you can have a technician alerted immediately. If the web site remains down after 10 more minutes, you can have two more technicians alerted. You can then have an upper level administrator contacted if the error still persists after 20 minutes and so on. These escalation times can be customized to any quantity of levels, times and contacts you see fit.

• Mobile SMS Alerts (Text Messages)

  You can setup any number of cell phone or mobile devices for text message based alerts. Whenever your website or server fails, we will send you an alert that will show up on your phone as a standard text message. This text message will include information about what website or server is failing and the name of the error it's throwing. It will also include information like total downtime and the date/time of the last test. You can receive an unlimited number of SMS alerts (via email gateway) from us for free. Please note, however, that your cell phone provider may charge you for text messaging.

• Email Alerts

  You can setup any number of email addresses for alerts. Whenever your website or server fails, we will send out an email to each of these addresses alerting you of the failure. These email messages will include information about what website or server is failing and the name of the error it's throwing. They will also include information like total downtime and the data/time of the last test.

• Phone Call Alerts

  If email and SMS alerts are not enough, we also offer direct phone call alerts where our automated system will call you and speak the alert information to you out loud. If our system is not able to reach you on the first call, it will re-attempt the call multiple times.

• Maintenance Window Scheduling

  We allow you to schedule recurring maintenance windows where your monitoring is temporarily disabled so you're not alerted of expected downtime. This is most commonly used when you have maintenance being performed on your server on a recurring basis and you expect your servers/websites to be down during that time.

Performance Reporting Features

• Performance Data Tracking

  Our monitoring service not only verifies that your website is functioning without error, but it also takes performance measurements during its test procedure. Performance measurements include connection time, response time, download time, and transfer rate. This data is stored and made available for your analysis in our Reports section. These reports are extremely useful in identifying potential bottlenecks and performance problems.

• Multiple Performance Reports

  During each test performed on your website, we collect and store various pieces of performance data. We then take this performance data and make it available to you via easy to read performance reports. These reports include ping response time charts, test step breakdown charts, HTTP response time charts, TCP response time charts, transfer rate charts and more. You can run these reports over hours, days, weeks or months, and see the overall performance trends and patterns. These performance charts become invaluable in determining bottlenecks in your network and web capacity during peak hours and network backup windows.

• Interactive Reports

  Reports are delivered through an interactive charting interface that allows you to customize reports. You simply choose the data that you want to look at, and the type of chart you want to display it on, and you're on your way. You can choose from 20 different types of charts-- like Bar, Line, Area, Pie, Scatter, Radar, Surface and Contour-- to display your data. In addition, there are many more features that you can customize through the intuitive menus and toolbars. You can even export charts and data to formats like Binary, Metafile and Bitmap, and delimited Text files. Our reporting system puts the power in your hands, rather than limiting you to pre-defined reports.

• Local Time Zone Reporting

  When you add users and contacts to your account, we allow you to specify what time zone they are in. This information allows us to convert dates and times displayed in reports and alerts to your user's relevant time zone. This way you never have to worry about manually converting dates and times in our system to your local time.

• Web Transaction Step Breakdown

  In additional to all our standard reports, we also provide a Web Transaction Step Breakdown report which allows you to analyze the performance of individual step in your multi-step test scripts. Using this report, you can identify performance problems and bottlenecks in your multi-step processes. Fixing these performance issues can often increase customer satisfaction and sales across your customer base.

• Detailed Test Log

  We provide a test log, which lists the information about every test performed on your website/server. This test data includes the date/time of the test, the geographic location where it was performed, the status of each test step and the individual performance data taken for each test step. The test log can be filtered by monitor, test profile, geographic location, test errors, and more. The test log is a great tool for analyzing the raw test data.

• Detailed Failure Event Reports

  We provide a detailed Failure Event Report for each confirmed failure that occurs with your website/server. The Failure Event Report allows you to see all the details regarding a failure in one place. The Failure Event Report includes the start and end date/times of the failure, a list of all the tests performed during the failure event, a list of the geographic locations where the failures were detected, and a list all the unique errors identified during the failure event. These Failure Event Reports are listed in the Failure Log. The Failure Log allows you to filter the list of Failure Reports by monitor and date/time so that you can quickly find the report you're looking for. Among other things, Failure Event Reports can be used during management meetings and event debriefings.

• Error Recurrence Reports

  We provide a report which allows you to clearly see which errors are most common on your website/server. This report breaks down all errors that have occurred on your website/server into a doughnut chart with percentages assigned to each slice. This report is invaluable in determining the best place to spend development resources to reduce downtime. Starting with the most frequent offending error and working your way down to the least frequent offending error will produce the fastest reduction in downtime.

• Real-time Monitoring Status

  We provide a real-time monitoring status page which lists every monitor in your account and lets you know if it's up or down, when it was last tested, the performance results of that last test, and what date/time the next test will be performed. This real-time status page allows you to get a quick view of your entire network all on one screen.

Control Panel Features

• Multiple Users per Account

  As with most companies, there may be multiple people in your company that need to interact with our system. We make this easy by allowing you to add multiple users to your account. Each user will have a different username and password and each user can have different assigned permissions.

• Customizable User Permissions

  You can assign a unique set of permissions to each user you add to your account. You can give each user permissions to view/add/edit/delete monitors, reports, test kit tools, account information, and users. This becomes useful when you need to give certain employees limited access to the system. For example, you might want to give some employees the ability to view reports while other employees can add/edit monitors but not delete them.