Transaction monitoring, also known as web application monitoring, is used to verify that key user interactions on your website are functioning correctly. These interactions can range from a simple login to a complete checkout process, such as adding items to a cart and completing a purchase on an e-commerce site.
To monitor user interactions efficiently, you need a script that can be run repeatedly to verify that everything continues to work as expected. A transaction monitor performs this task by running a script that contains every step of a user workflow. It simulates the process by executing it in a browser (Chrome) to ensure everything works correctly.
Uptrends provides a transaction recorder, available as a Chrome extension, to help you build these scripts easily. After recording a transaction, it creates a transaction monitor that handles the whole process of checking the website using simulated user interactions through a browser (Chrome). You can adjust monitor settings, such as check frequency, browser type, location, and error conditions to fit your needs.
You can either refine the script yourself (self-service transactions) or request help from Uptrends Support to tune it (full-service transactions). If you prefer to write scripts manually, you can skip the recording step and add your own script directly to a transaction monitor.
Once you’ve tested your transaction monitor and are happy with the way it works, proceed and set up alerting for it. After all, this is what it’s all about, to be alerted when things are not working as expected.
1. Introduction
If you are new to web application/transaction monitoring, you will find some background knowledge in the following articles:
- Get an introduction in What is web application monitoring?
- Learn Why you should use web application monitoring
- Check if web application monitoring is the right solution for you
2. Planning your transaction monitoring
Understanding the mechanics of your transactions, the functionality you need to test, and the impact of your monitoring on your systems is a crucial part of planning your transactions. You also may have to involve other teams at your company to set up transaction monitoring.
- Map out possible transaction paths
- Decide what to test
- Caveats, tips and tricks: things to consider and watch out for when setting up your monitoring
- Reasons why you may need help from other teams at your company
3. Recording your transactions
Using the transaction recorder properly leads to cleaner recordings and faster monitor setup time.
- Download and use the transaction recorder
- Follow the shopping cart step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use the transaction recorder
- Choose between full-service and self-service transactions
4. Editing and testing your transaction script
Once you’ve recorded your transaction, and you’ve chosen to test the script yourself (you can also let our Support team handle your testing), you need to troubleshoot the resulting script, set up content checks if you haven’t already, and adjust the vault permissions on newly created items. Finally, you need to keep an eye on the monitor in staging mode before moving your monitor to production.
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To learn about the editor, steps, and actions, check out Understanding the step editor
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Actions are at the core of transactions. Learn more about them:
- Page interactions - navigate, click, set, etc.
- Test actions - content checks and wait
- Control actions - switching (inline) frames or tabs
- Control actions - adjust variable content
- Ignore errors for optional steps and actions
- Using selectors and selector alternatives
- Transaction variables and adjusting variable content
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In the exercise Testing and editing your script, find out about the Test now functionality, how to handle dynamic IDs and timeout errors. It also contains a Testing checklist.
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A few other things you may have to deal with, depending on your setup and transactions:
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Manage sensitive values that were automatically added to the vault during recording
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Manage vault authorizations (automatically created sections)
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Transaction monitoring for mobile setup
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Working with a shadow DOM in your transaction
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Working with SMS-based 2FA or one-time password-based 2FA in your transaction
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Adding metrics such as Core Web Vitals and W3C navigation timings to your transaction results.
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Bypass or override the default DNS system by using a DNS bypass in your transaction.
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5. Results of transaction monitoring
Once your transactions are monitored, you’ll receive feedback. There are several sources you can look into to find out what’s going wrong when issues occur.
6. Troubleshooting
When the transaction monitoring does not work out as expected, here are a few things to check:
Credits
Transaction monitors use Transaction credits to let you create and schedule monitors for execution. Uptrends uses credits to calculate the pricing for different monitoring services. For more information, refer to the credits knowledge base article.