Create a Browser Check

Use this guide to create a Browser Test. A browser check replays a multi-step user journey in a real browser from your selected locations, and reports where the journey broke.

Visit the Synthetic Monitoring in OpenObserve page before starting. It explains the concepts used in this guide.

Availability

This feature is available only in Enterprise Edition and Cloud.

Prerequisites

Your OpenObserve Cloud or self-hosted instance is running.
You have permissions to work with synthetic checks. Access is controlled from IAM > Roles > Permissions.
At least one location is registered on the deployment.
To record a journey rather than build it by hand, install the OpenObserve Recorder Chrome extension and allow it in incognito mode.

Steps to create a browser check

Step 1: Start a new browser check

Log in to OpenObserve.
In the left navigation panel, select Synthetic.
Click New Check at the top-right corner. The Create a Check dialog opens and shows the folder the check will be created in.
Select Browser Test.
On the New browser check screen, enter the Starting URL. It must begin with http:// or https://, and it accepts {{variable}} placeholders.
Enter a Name, or leave it to be filled in from the page title.
Choose how to build the journey:
- Record journey: capture the steps by using the site.
- Build manually: add each step yourself in the editor.

Both buttons stay disabled until the starting URL is valid.

Creating your first check

When the organization has no checks yet, the empty Synthetic Checks page shows the check types as cards. You can select Browser Test there instead of opening the dialog.

Step 2: Set up the recorder

This screen appears only when the OpenObserve Recorder extension is not detected. It confirms that OpenObserve will open your starting URL in a fresh incognito tab and capture your clicks and inputs, with no code to write.

Set up the recorder screen with the install and incognito steps

Under Install the OpenObserve Recorder, install the Chrome extension, then click Check again. The step turns green and reads Installed once it is detected.
Under Enable incognito mode, open chrome://extensions, click Details on the extension, and enable Allow in Incognito. Then turn on the Done toggle.

Both recorder setup steps complete, with Open and Record enabled

Click Open & Record to start recording, or select Skip -- I'll build the steps manually.

Recording opens your starting URL in a fresh incognito window with the recorder attached. A banner reads OpenObserve Synthetics Recorder started debugging this browser, and the recorder highlights each element as you point at it, showing the selector it captured.

Recorder attached to an incognito window, showing a captured selector for a link

Use the site as a user would. The recorder captures each click, entry, and navigation as a step.

Recording runs in incognito

Recording and replay open a separate incognito window, which is why the extension must be allowed in incognito mode. The extension replays the journey on your own machine, not from a probe location.

Step 3: Build the journey

The editor opens on the Journey stage. If you skipped recording, the step list is empty and offers Record journey and Add a step manually.

Empty journey with the Record journey and Add a step manually buttons

While recording is running, the list fills in live and the header shows a red Recording indicator. Click Stop when the journey is complete.

Journey editor recording live, with steps appearing and a Stop button

Use the toolbar to work on the journey once recording stops:

Add Step appends an empty step for you to fill in.
Record reopens the recorder to capture more steps.
Replay runs the journey on your own machine, so you can watch it work before saving.
Use Filter steps once the list grows long.

A recorded journey arrives as a numbered list, with a generated step name and the captured selector on each row. Drag a row to reorder it, or use the row buttons to insert, duplicate, or delete a step.

Recorded journey of ten steps with the first step expanded

Expand a step to edit it. Each step has an Action, an optional Step name, a Timeout (ms) that defaults to 10000, and, depending on the action, a Selector or a value field such as URL.

Journey step expanded with the Action list open

These are the actions available, and what each one needs:

Action	Value field	Needs a selector
Navigate	URL	No
Click	None	Yes
Type	Text to type	Yes
Select	Option	Yes
Press	Key	No
Hover	None	Yes
Scroll	To (px or selector)	No
Wait	Duration (ms)	No
Assert	Expected	Yes
Screenshot	None	No

The selector type defaults to CSS, and you can switch it to XPath, Text, TestID, or Role.

Click Continue when the journey is complete.

Journey rules

The journey must contain at least one step, and the first step must be Navigate. The probe opens a blank page and never navigates on its own.
A journey can contain up to 50 steps.
Each step timeout must be between 100 ms and 60000 ms.

Step 4: Configure the check

Click Configure at the top right, or Continue at the bottom, to move to the configuration stage. Use Go Back to return to the journey.

Check Details and Authentication and Network sections of the configure stage

Check Details

Field	Description
Name	Required.
Folder	Defaults to default.
Enabled	Enabled by default.
Starting URL	The URL the journey begins at.
Description	Optional free text.
Tags	Optional labels. Type a tag and press Enter, or click Add.

Authentication & Network, marked Optional

Turn on HTTP Basic auth and enter a username and password if the site requires it.
Click Add variable to define a variable as a name and value pair, and turn on the secure toggle on a row to mask its value. A check can hold up to 50 variables. Reference one in the starting URL as {{name}}.

Step 5: Set the Schedule

Select a frequency: 1 min, 5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, Cron, or Custom.
- Custom adds a Repeat every number and a unit of Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, or Months.
- Cron adds a Cron expression field. The expression is parsed with a seconds field first, so every five minutes is 0 */5 * * * *.
  
  Ignore the placeholder
  
  The field placeholder shows a five-field expression, */5 * * * *. The server rejects it. Use the six-field form shown above.
Choose Schedule now or Schedule later. Schedule later adds a start date and start time, and is not available for cron schedules.

Schedule, Alerts, Locations, and Browsers and Devices sections

Where the Timezone field appears

A Timezone list is shown only when you select Cron, or when you select Schedule later with any other frequency. A preset frequency that starts now does not need one.

Frequency limits

A browser check cannot run more often than once per 60 seconds, and its timeout must be shorter than its interval.

Step 6: Configure Alerts

Set Retries on failure, from 0 to 3. The default is 0.
Set the wait between retries, from 0 to 300. The default is 5.
Set how many consecutive failures trigger a notification, from 1 to 100. The default is 1.
Select one or more Destinations. To create one, click Add New Destination, which opens the alert destinations page in a new tab.
Set the Cooldown Period in minutes, from 0 to 1440. The default is 5.

Important behavior

Only Warning, Failed, and Error runs notify. A passing run never does.
One notification is sent per run, not one per location.
The wait between retries is labeled in milliseconds but is applied in seconds. A value of 300 means five minutes, and the field rejects anything above 300.
The form marks Destinations and Cooldown Period as required, but neither is enforced. A check with no destination can still be saved, and it will never notify anyone.

Step 7: Select Locations, Browsers, and Devices

In Locations, select one or more locations. Each entry shows the provider, region name, and region code.
In Browsers & Devices, tick the combinations to run. The grid lists a row per browser and a column per device, and defaults to Chromium on Desktop.

Which browsers you see

The browsers and devices offered are reported by the probe agents serving your locations, so the grid differs between deployments. A deployment whose agents run only Chromium shows a single browser row.

Each combination is a separate execution

A check runs once per location per browser and device combination. Three locations and two combinations produce six executions per run, so add combinations deliberately.

A check can hold up to 12 combinations. The last remaining combination cannot be cleared.

Step 8: Set Capture options

In Capture, choose when the probe takes screenshots: Always, On fail (the default), or Off.

Each screenshot appears against its step in the run detail.

Step 9: Save the check

Click Save check.

The form reports a problem if the name is missing, the starting URL is missing or not http/https, no location is selected, the first step is not Navigate, or a step that needs a selector does not have one.

Confirm that the check appears on the Synthetic Checks page and that a result arrives after the first scheduled run.

Next Steps

Analyze Check Results

Need help:

Community Slack

GitHub issues