We’re introducing CI/CD Monitors in Sematext Synthetics, designed for teams that want to automate their endpoint checks and user journey tests not only in production, but also as part of their GitHub workflows, before changes reach production, in order to avoid regressions and other issues.

What Are CI/CD Monitors?

While traditional Synthetics Monitors are great for ongoing, regular checks typically used for monitoring production, CI/CD Monitors are built for continuous, pre-release testing. They can be triggered automatically as part of your CI/CD pipelines, running checks as soon as code is pushed, pull requests are opened, or new versions are deployed. This approach supports shift left testing, enabling earlier detection of issues and reducing the risk of production incidents.

 

Typical Use Cases

• Smoke Testing: Quickly check that key parts of your application are working after each code push. 
• Regression Testing: Automate checks to ensure new code doesn’t break existing functionality. 
• Integration Testing: Run complex, multi-step tests to verify that different parts of your system are working together as expected.

Key Features

1. GitHub Integration: CI/CD Monitors are currently available for GitHub, allowing you to run tests on every commit, pull request, or merge. This means you can catch issues earlier in the development process, before they reach production. 
2. Monitoring Options: Use either HTTP Monitors for simple availability and performance checks or Browser Monitors for more complex User Journey tests, including multi-step scripts and resource usage monitoring. This flexibility allows you to test anything from a single API endpoint to a full login and checkout flow. 
3. Dynamic URL Support: If your preview environments have changing URLs, like https://test-12.sematext.com for one PR and https://test-13.sematext.com for the next, you can set up monitors with dynamic URLs so your monitors always target the correct endpoints. 
4. Monitor Groups: Organize related monitors into groups, allowing you to run a full suite of tests upon each deployment, ensuring all critical endpoints are covered, based on your deployment workflow.

How It Looks in GitHub

Once the CI/CD Monitors are triggered from GitHub, the results will be shown in the GitHub Actions console. You’ll be able to see detailed status updates for each monitor in your pipeline, including pass/fail status, response times, and any errors that occurred. This integration ensures your team can quickly catch issues without having to leave GitHub.

How It Looks in Sematext Cloud

The full details of each test run can be viewed in Sematext Cloud, where you’ll find metrics such as response time, status codes, and detailed error logs. You can drill down into each monitor’s individual result to see what went wrong. 

For more information, as well as guides on how to set up the integration, please refer to the CI/CD Integration docs.