Scenarios

How to set up and manage monitoring scenarios in XTC.

To view monitoring scenarios, your account must at least have the role of a tester within the project.

To create, edit and delete monitoring scenarios, your account must at least have the role of a test manager within the project.

Setting Up Monitoring Scenarios

The basis for all monitoring scenarios is a set of XLT test cases that will be run continuously. These tests are preferably organized in a test suite, which is located in the repository you defined in the monitoring project configuration.

XLT tests are basically Java classes containing JUnit tests. These classes will be built by XTC so it can then run the test scenarios contained in them.

Adding a New Scenario

To add a new monitoring scenario to your project, just click the + button at the top of the scenarios list. You will be asked to enter a Name (which must be unique across all scenarios in this project) and Description and, most importantly, the Java Class (including class path) in your repository that contains this scenario as a JUnit test case.

Creating a new monitoring scenario.

The new scenario will now show up in the list. It will be disabled by default and it will automatically use the scenario default settings. You can now adjust these settings as needed by editing the scenario.

Managing Existing Scenarios

In the Scenarios table you may manage the monitoring scenarios of your project, add new scenarios, edit settings for the existing ones, quickly enable or disable scenarios or their notifications, pause and unpause the execution or delete scenarios that are no longer needed by choosing these actions from the scenario’s context menu.

Overview of all existing scenarios in the project.

Disabling vs. Pausing

To stop running a scenario for any reason (e.g. it is currently broken and needs a fix to be deployed, or the data is not needed for some other reason), you can disable it in its context menu. But you can also pause it for a specified time, which means the scenario is temporarily disabled, but is automatically reactivated after the configured time. Use this feature to investigate and fix scenario errors without being distracted by alerts. If you forget to reactivate the scenario, XTC will do it for you.

To pause a scenario, open the context menu for the scenario, and click Pause. You will be prompted to enter the date/time until which you want to pause the scenario. Alternatively, you can pause a scenario directly from the monitoring project’s Dashboard page. To unpause a scenario, click Continue in the context menu.

Scenario Details

You can open the detail view of a scenario by clicking the scenario name. There you can adjust the scenario settings and quality sensors as needed, and update basic notification settings. Otherwise the scenario defaults will be used.

Scenario Settings

On the Settings tab, you may adjust how your scenario is run.

You can simply switch between the default and your overwritten values for any setting by checking Use Default in any settings section. You will be asked to confirm your decision.

Switch between default and custom values by using the Use Default checkbox.

General

In General you set the scenario name and description, and the Java class containing this scenario.

Execution

In Execution you define how the scenarios should be executed:

  • you define an interval (how often a scenario should be started, e.g. every minute) between 1 second and 24 hours, and
  • what the maximum runtime for a scenario is (if this time is exceeded, the scenario will be aborted).

Retry

In Retry you define the retry behavior of this scenario:

  • retry can be active/inactive, and
  • if it is active you can define the interval, i.e. after which time period the scenario shall be retried, and
  • a count, i.e. how many retries are allowed before the scenario counts as failed.

Locations

In Locations you define where to run the scenario from. Available locations will depend on the location of the machines that were provisioned for your monitoring project. You may also show or hide the locations where machines have not yet been provisioned.

Properties

In Properties you may add test properties to use for scenario execution. These properties may be entered as free text, so make sure your input is valid!

Notifications

To enable or disable scenario notifications, your account must at least have the role of a test manager within the project.

On the Notifications tab you can enable or disable notifications entirely for the current scenario if desired, and set a default reply-to address for email notifications.

When an alert is triggered and to whom notifications are sent is defined by the scenario’s quality sensors and the notification lists these sensors are linked to.

Quality Sensors

To change quality sensors of a scenario, your account must at least have the role of a test manager within the project.

The most crucial part of the settings is to define success metrics which will be validated during the scenario execution. Violations cause the scenario to be treated as failed. Success metrics are defined as quality sensors in the monitoring project’s configuration.

Multiple quality sensors can be assigned to a scenario. You can add them by clicking the + symbol at the top of the Quality Sensors tab and picking one of the sensors you have defined in your project configuration.

Note that the quality sensors of a scenario are evaluated in the order listed (you can change the order at any time by selecting Move Up or Move Down from the quality sensor’s context menu).

Failing sensors can optionally cause the following sensors to be ignored (check Stops Evaluation on adding a new sensor or change this setting in the quality sensor’s context menu). Use this feature, for example, to avoid alerting anyone about performance issues if the scenario fails completely.

List of quality sensors for a monitoring scenario.

Last modified February 28, 2025