Create and edit a synthetic monitor

Create or edit a synthetic monitor to test the availability and performance of your HTTP endpoints before your customers discover issues.

Before you begin

If you're testing private endpoints or want to run the monitors from your environment, one or more locations must be created to host the monitor. To create a location, see Create synthetic monitoring locations.

Role required: sn_sow_synthetics.synthetics_editor or sn_sow_synthetics.synthetics_admin

Procedure

1. Navigate to All > Service Operations Workspace and select the synthetic monitoring icon ().
2. On the Overview page, either create a synthetic monitor or edit an existing one.
   • To create a synthetic monitor, select New.
   • To edit an existing one, select the monitor you want to edit and then select the Details tab.
3. On the form, fill in the fields.
   1. In the Monitor details section, enter a unique name for the monitor and a description.
   2. In the HTTP settings section, fill in the fields.

      Table 1. HTTP settings section

      Field	Description
      HTTP method	HTTP method that you want to monitor for the endpoint.
      HTTP endpoint CI	CI that you want the monitor to test. If the endpoint doesn't exist, choose Create new endpoint and enter the endpoint URL.
      Related service CI	Application service CI related to the HTTP endpoint. The entered value is used to create or update the CI relationship between the HTTP endpoint and the application service.
      Support group	Group who is notified and assigned alerts when this monitor fails.
      Query parameters	String of query parameters to include in the request URL. Note: The string shouldn't include the leading question mark. For example, use id=xyz&customer=myco instead of ?id=xyz&customer=myco.
      Credentials	Credential needed if the endpoint requires authentication. Supported credentials are basic auth and access tokens.
      Headers	Key-value pairs for the HTTP request headers. You can add multiple pairs.
      Body	Text that is used if the API expects a message body, such as a JSON snippet.

   3. In the Locations section, select one or more locations.
      • To run this monitor's test from your ServiceNow instance, select Current Instance.
        Note:

        When running tests from the platform, only six tests can be run every minute for performance reasons.

        The endpoint for the monitor must be publicly available.

      • Choose any of the locations you previously created.

      For more information on how to create a location, see Create synthetic monitoring locations.
   4. In the Assertion section, define a successful test by selecting one or more criteria, an operator, and a value.
      Note:

      Multiple criteria are joined with an AND phrase, so the test must pass all criteria to be successful.

      Criteria type	Description of success
      Status code	Endpoint returns the given status code.
      Response time (in ms)	Endpoint sends a response in a faster time period than the given value.
      Response body	Endpoint sends a string value in the response body that matches the selected operator and given value.

   5. In the Frequency section, enter the number of minutes between each test run.
   6. Optional: In the Alert settings section, activate the toggle switch and select an alert severity to create an alert if the test fails.
4. Select Save.

Result

The Overview page for the synthetic monitor displays the results of the tests that the monitor runs. See Identifying system issues with synthetic monitoring for more information.