Monitor key requests

Certain requests in your web-application environment likely warrant special attention, either because they're a critical measure of the success of your business (for example, a login request or a shopping-cart checkout request) or because they provide vital technical functionality that your application relies on. DESK provides advanced monitoring functionality for such requests, known as key requests, so that you can monitor them with extra care.

Key requests are highlighted in the Key requests section on each service overview page. This visibility is particularly valuable for low-volume, high-importance requests that might otherwise appear at the bottom of the Top requests section on the service overview page. A request can be automatically marked as key if you pin it to your dashboard. However, you can also manually set a key request.

Dashboarding

To create a dashboard tile for a specific request:

1. Open the navigation menu and select Transactions & services.
2. Select the relevant service from the list.
3. On the service overview page, click the View button (View requests, View dynamic web requests, or View resources).
4. Open the Browse (…) button and click Pin to dashboard. A new request-specific tile that shows the most important metrics for that particular request is then added to your homepage dashboard.

Manual setting

To tag a specific request as a key request:

1. Open the navigation menu and select Transactions & services.
2. Select the relevant service from the list.
3. On the service overview page, click the View... button (View requests, View dynamic web requests, or View resources).
4. Scroll down and select a request from the Top requests section.
5. On the request page, click the Browse (...) button and select Mark as key request.

Long-term trend data for key requests

DESK enables you to chart any request that it detects during monitoring. By default, detailed history of all requests is retained for 10 days. Longer-term historical data is maintained for requests that you manually identify as key requests. Trend lines for key requests are retained perpetually, however the granularity of long-term history is gradually reduced over time:

• 0-14 days: 1-minute interval granularity available for dashboarding and API access.
• 14-28 Days: 5-minute interval granularity available for dashboarding and API access.
• 28-400 days: 1-hour interval granularity available for dashboarding and API access.
• 400+ days: 1-day interval granularity available for dashboarding and API access.

API access

Timeseries and historical data of key requests can be retrieved via the DESK Timeseries API endpoint.

Custom alerting thresholds

Because certain requests may have specific response-time and failure-rate patterns, while others may have strict SLA thresholds, DESK provides you with the ability to define custom alerting thresholds when anomalies are detected related to the performance of key requests.

Reduced alerting priority for low-volume requests

DESK assumes that low-volume requests are of less importance than high-volume and key requests. This means that requests that contribute less than 1% to the overall load of a service won't raise alerts unless their impact is significant enough that the service's overall response time or failure rate is affected. Because this default treatment is not appropriate for all low-volume requests, you should manually tag any important low-volume requests as key requests to ensure that they have standard alerting thresholds.