Add synthetic transactions to your Browser Test 🔗

Use synthetic transactions in your Browser Tests to test multi-step user flows and transactions.

What are synthetic transactions? 🔗

A synthetic transaction is a group of one or more logically related interactions that represent a business-critical user flow, such as the login process or a checkout flow. Synthetic transactions are made up of steps.

Splunk Synthetic Monitoring generates the following additional metrics for each synthetic transaction:

Duration: Total duration for the synthetic transaction
Requests: Total number of requests made during the synthetic transaction
Size: Total size of the content loaded during the synthetic transaction

You can create multiple synthetic transactions in a given test to measure size, duration, and requests for multiple workflows across multiple pages.

What are steps? 🔗

Steps are interactions with a webpage that require user input. By adding steps to your Browser Test, you can simulate choices or interactions that a user might make and test how your application behaves in response.

Example steps include:

Clicking a link
Entering information in a field
Selecting a value from a drop-down menus
Accepting or dismissing an alert
Running and saving values from JavaScript
Saving text from an element

You can identify specific page elements involved in these steps by their id, name, XPATH, CSS Path, link, or JS path. Use developer tools to interact with the DOM (inspector) and JavaScript (console) to identify and interact with the elements of a site.

To learn more about all available types of steps, see Types of steps you can include in your Browser Tests below.

A step doesn’t generate its own dedicated metrics, but it counts toward the metrics for the synthetic transaction it belongs to. Additionally, when a step triggers a new page load, the page load triggers the set of page load metrics.

Types of steps you can include in your Browser Tests 🔗

Assertions are checks to see what state an object exists in, for example if text is present or an element is visible. The following table describes the types of steps you can include for actions:

Type of step	Description
Accept alert	Accept an alert that appears on the page.
Clear	Clear an element you identify under Selector. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Click	Click on an element you identify under Selector. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Dismiss alert	Dismiss an alert that appears on the page.
Fill in field	Fill in the field you identify under Selector with a value you provide in the Value field. For security and reusability, you may want to use a built-in, custom, or global variable in the Value field. Reference a custom variable as `{{custom.your-variable-name}}`. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Go to URL	Navigate to a URL you provide in the URL field.
Execute JavaScript	Execute a piece of JavaScript you provide under Value. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Save return value from Javascript	Execute a piece of JavaScript you specify in the JavaScript field. If the script returns a value you want to save, specify a name for the saved value in the Variable field. This creates a custom variable which you can reference in subsequent steps as `{{custom.your-variable-name}}`. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Save text from element	Save the text an element you identify under Selector, as the variable you provide under Variable.
Select	Select an element you identify under Selector. Choose the value you identify under Value. Optionally, wait for navigation.
Switch to iframe	Switch focus to an embedded document in an inline frame, identified under Selector.
Switch to main	Switch focus back to the main frame of the webpage.
Wait	Wait a certain number of minutes. See, Limits and defaults for configurable wait times.