Digital Experience overview

Digital Experience displays metric data from all website and URI entities monitored with SolarWinds Observability SaaS, information about website entities configured with Real User Monitoring (RUM), and information about the synthetic probe servers used to collect that data. To open the Digital Experience area overview, click Digital Experience in the left pane.

Metric data collected from all monitored website and URI entities with SolarWinds Observability SaaS is available in the Availability and Real User Monitoring tabs. To collect this synthetic monitoring metric data, SolarWinds Observability SaaS uses probes to periodically connect to the website and perform tests. Probes from the selected locations connect to your website at the selected interval and test the performance and availability of the website. View information about these probes in the Probes tab.

Monitored website and URI availability

Click Digital Experience > Availability to view detailed availability statistics for all of your website and URI entities monitored with configured synthetic checks. The Availability tab displays synthetic monitoring widgets that monitor your entity's overall status, availability, outages, as well as any active alerts that need your attention. See Synthetic monitoring for more information about Synthetic monitoring in SolarWinds Observability.

Overall Status

The Overall Status Widget displays the number of your website and URI entities with current Up, Down, Paused, Unknown, or In Maintenance statuses across a selected time period. The Overall number of entities is displayed in the middle, with individual statuses displayed to the right of the graph.

• Up: A website or URI is considered Up if it passes at least one Availability check (website availability HTTP/HTTPS protocols, Ping, or TCP port). Entities with an Up status are displayed in green.

• Down: A website or URI is considered Down after failing two consecutive Availability checks. Entities with a Down status are displayed in red.

• Paused: A website or URI is considered Paused if monitoring has been paused for that entity. Entities with a Paused status are displayed in purple.

• Unknown: A website or URI is considered Unknown if it is not transmitting availability data to SolarWinds Observability. Entities with an Unknown status are displayed in grey.

• In Maintenance: A website or URI entity is in maintenance during periods of scheduled maintenance. Entities with an In Maintenance status are displayed in yellow.

Availability

The Availability widget displays the average percentage of all website and URI entities with an Up (available) status compared to all entities with an Up or Down status historically for the selected time period. For example, let's say you monitor a combination of 50 total website and URI entities with SolarWinds Observability. During the entire duration of your selected time period, 21 of your entities are Up, and 29 are down. In this example, 42% of your websites have an Up status on average for the duration of the selected time period.

Outages

The Outages widget displays the total number of outages for all of your monitored website and URI entities across the selected time period. An Outage occurs when your entity fails two consecutive synthetic monitoring checks (Availability checks, Ping checks, or TCP port checks) in any region by default.

For example, if you have availability checks for your website in Boston for HTTP and HTTPS protocols, that's two synthetic checks. If at one testing interval, the tests fail for Boston for the HTTP protocol, and then fail again for the second testing interval, your website recorded an outage.

See Outages.

Active Alerts

An overview of the active alerts triggered by websites and URIs, categorized by severity. Active alerts are alerts that have been triggered but not cleared. This includes acknowledged alerts. For more information about the entity's active alerts, click the widget title or click the vertical ellipsis () in the upper-right corner of the widget and click View All Active Alerts.

Add tags to your website or URI entities

Categorize your website and URI entities into relevant groups by adding tags. For example, if you have several documentation websites that you are tracking, you could add a tag of 'documentation' to these sites to group them together. With the tag added to related entities, you could search for 'documentation' on the Digital Experience Availability tab to view all of the relevant entities at one time.

1. On the Digital Experience Availability tab, click the website or URI entity where you want to add a tag.

2. To add a tag to an entity with no tags, click Add tags.

3. Enter a tag Key and tag Value. Click Add tag. Repeat this step for any tag you want to add.

4. Click Save.

Modify tags for your website or URI entities

1. On the Digital Experience Availability tab, click the website or URI entity where you want to modify a tag.

2. Click Modify tags.

3. Modify any existing tag Keys or tag Values. Click the X of an existing tag to delete it.

4. Click Add tag to add a new tag, and enter a Key and Value. Repeat this step for any tag you want to add.

5. Click Save.

Pause synthetic monitoring for website or URI entities

Pause synthetic monitoring for your website or URI entities on the Digital Experience Availability tab. There are times when pausing a synthetic monitoring check may be useful, such as during planned maintenance for your site. For example, if you plan on performing extended maintenance on your website and you don't want to be notified of the downtime, or you don't want the downtime reflected in your website statistics, you can pause synthetic monitoring for your entity.

To pause Synthetic monitoring on a website or URI entity, click the ellipsis for the desired entity and then click Pause Monitoring. When you pause a synthetic monitoring check, monitoring will be stopped for the website or URI, and the Synthetic Monitoring column will note the entity as Paused. You will not be notified about the status of a paused synthetic monitoring check while it is paused.

To resume Synthetic monitoring, click the ellipsis for a paused entity and then click Resume Monitoring.

Real user website interactions and results

Real User Monitoring (RUM) measures user experience with your website and also tracks user activity. Click Digital Experience > Real User Monitoring to view detailed real user data for all of your website entities configured with RUM and monitored with SolarWinds Observability.

Synthetic transactions and test results

Click Digital Experience > Synthetic transactions to view any Synthetic transactions you've created in SolarWinds Observability SaaS, as well as detailed information about their performance across the selected time period. Synthetic transactions in SolarWinds Observability SaaS test specific aspects of your monitored websites, giving you insight into whether your websites are functioning as expected. See Synthetic transactions for more information.

The widgets in the Synthetic transactions tab display the following information about all Synthetic transactions:

Synthetic transactions Success Rate

The total number of Synthetic transactions that resulted in a success and error across the selected time period.

Historical Overview

• Synthetic transaction total durations in milliseconds or seconds, overall or by location, across the selected time period.

• Synthetic transaction success rates as a percentage, overall or by location, across the selected time period.

Active Alerts

An overview of the active alerts triggered by synthetic transactions, categorized by severity. Active alerts are alerts that have been triggered but not cleared. This includes acknowledged alerts. For more information about the entity's active alerts, click the widget title or click the vertical ellipsis () in the upper-right corner of the widget and click View All Active Alerts.

The Synthetic transaction detail grid is displayed below the widgets mentioned above. Quickly view all Synthetic transactions and related statistics monitored with SolarWinds Observability SaaS across the selected time period. View test results and success rates for each Synthetic transaction, as well as testing details such as probe testing location, screen resolution, test interval, and test description. Click a Synthetic transaction to open the Entity Explorer focused on your selection. Click the vertical ellipsis () to edit or remove the Synthetic transaction.

Add tags to group your Synthetic transactions

Group and categorize your Synthetic transactions by adding applicable tags. For example, if you have several Synthetic transactions that test the e-commerce functionality of your website or URI, you could add a 'checkout' tag to these transactions to group them together. With the tag added to related transactions, you could search for 'Checkout' in the Digital Experience overview to view all of the relevant Synthetic transactions at one time.

1. In the Synthetic transaction overview, click the Synthetic transaction where you want to add or edit a tag.

2. Click Add tags.

3. Enter a tag Key and tag Value. Click Add tag. Repeat this step for any tag you want to add.

4. Click Save.

Modify tags for your Synthetic transactions

1. In the Synthetic transactions overview, click the Synthetic transaction where you want to modify a tag.

2. Click Modify tags.

3. Modify any existing tag Keys or tag Values. Click the X of an existing tag to delete it.

4. Click Add tag to add a new tag, and enter a Key and Value. Repeat this step for any tag you want to add.

5. Click Save.

Probe servers and associated IP addresses

Click Digital Experience > Probes to view a detailed list of all synthetic probe servers, their location, platform, and IP addresses. Synthetic probes are servers that collect website data from entities within a region, country, or city based on your website data settings. The data received from the probes is processed and contextualized into charts, graphs, and lists, that report the state of a website for each configured entity. This information includes website health, host health, and average response time. The probes are always active and listen for responses from entities within their geographical area. After they collect the website data, they process requests from active listeners.

One of the most common reasons for SolarWinds Observability SaaS reporting an outage is not that a site or server is down, but that our servers are being blocked by a firewall or access control list. Your server or site must open access to SolarWinds Observability SaaS URLs and IP addresses so SolarWinds Observability SaaS functions can complete.

Probe servers are easily identifiable by their location with information detailing their region, country, and city. To copy a probe's IP addresses, hover over the IPv4 column and click Copy. To export a list of all IPv4 addresses, click the vertical ellipsis and the desired export option.