How to Use the Web Application Editor to Manage Synthetic Transactions in Operations Manager 2007

Applies To: Operations Manager 2007 R2, Operations Manager 2007 SP1

Use the Web Application Editor to capture navigation through one or more Web sites. In the Web Application Editor, you can interactively record a sequence of actions on a Web site or you can manually create a set of requests that monitor the Web site. This sequence of requests creates a synthetic transaction (sometimes known as a robotic transaction, or robot) that can be played back at regular intervals to provide information about how your Web site is performing. Note that these transactions are actual transactions. For example, if you have one transaction that transfers money from one bank account to another, you might want to create a second transaction that transfers the money back to the original account.

The capture Web site navigation feature intercepts traffic between Internet Explorer and the Web site and captures all HTTP request data, such as headers and body text. This feature also sets defaults for monitoring criteria to match the captured data. For instance, if during capture a Web server reports status code 404 for a request, the MP Configuration Wizard defaults to expecting a 404 status code for that request. These defaults can be changed by editing the object.

It is generally easy to create requests by capturing them using the recording feature. However, in some instances you might want to customize requests with additional tags or properties or add additional requests that you manually create. For example, you might want to manually add tags to identify the transaction as an Operations Manager transaction instead of a user transaction.

The Web Application Editor is accessed from the Authoring pane while viewing a Web Application object type in one of the following ways:

• By clicking Record a browser session in the Actions pane. Use this method when you want to create a new capture.

• By clicking Edit web application settings in the Actions pane. Use this method when you want to manually add or edit requests for an object.

• By selecting the Configure Advanced Monitoring or Record a browser session option in the Add Monitoring Wizard. Use this method when you want to record or manually configure the request immediately after creating the object type.

In This Section

• How to Capture a Web Application Recording in Operations Manager 2007
  Provides steps for using the browser capture feature to capture a Web session. This session is then played back later to provide monitoring data about performance and response time.

• How To Set Health Criteria for a Request in Operations Manager 2007
  Provides steps for specifying what conditions create an error or warning state during a synthetic transaction.

• How to Create or Edit a Request in Operations Manager 2007
  Provides steps for manually creating and editing requests in a synthetic transaction.

• How to Set Properties for a Web Application Object in Operations Manager 2007
  Provides steps for setting properties for the entire transaction.