eValid™ -- Automated Web Quality Solution Browser-Based, Client-Side, Functional Testing & Validation, Load & Performance Tuning, Page Timing, Website Analysis, and Rich Internet Application Monitoring.

Summary
Using eValid to provide basic monitoring of a particular WebSite feature involves use of record/play, alarms, email alert capabilities, and scheduler interaction. This page outlines the basic steps in setting up an eValid Monitor Function.

Step 1: Create an eValid Script
Using eValid, navigate to the site you would like to monitor and perform the series of interactions with the part of the site to be monitored. Your test script can be as lengthy as you like.

Step 2: Choose Limits and Alarms
During record mode, carefully select the parts of the script to be monitored by inserting timer commands available from eValid to be able to properly monitor each command. The order of the command to be inserted are as follows:

# Recording by eValid
# (c) Copyright 2013 by Software Research, Inc.
#
# This script is a typical example of basic monitoring of a site using timers to 
# automatically send an alarm to the user in the case that a specific page being 
# monitored takes more than the specifed threshold amount of time.
  
ProjectID "Project"
GroupID "Group"
TestID "Monitoring Demo"
LogID "AUTO"

ScreenSize 1280 1024
FontSize 2
 
OnAlarmEmail "user@email.com" "ALARM" "Overtime!! Navigation > 1000 ms!" ""

ResetTimer
InitLink "http://www.mysite.com"
ElapsedTime
OvertimeAlarm 1000 "" "http://www.e-valid.com/Cgi-Bin/evalid.alarm.cgi" "" 2
# End of script.

This script illustrates that prior to navigating to http://www.mysite.com site, declare an OnAlarm... script command action, and a ResetTimer command is inserted in for all the internal timers of eValid to be reset to 0.0. The navigation is then executed. Once the page is fully rendered, the ElapsedTime command reads the total time it took to navigate to the site from the ResetTimer command until the ElapsedTime command.

Finally, the OvertimeAlarm command ("Record > Timer > Set Alarm" or "Ctrl + A") contains the instructions to follow during an OvertimeAlarm. Along with eValid's available "OnAlarm..." script commands, the user has an option to Stop, Pause, or Continue playback as well as setting the threshold for the OvertimeAlarm which also includes (Optionally, the Message and/or the location of the CGI-Bin containing a .cgi with actions such as the email/displaying banner webpage, etc.) to which the ..ALARM.. triggers.

Step 3: Creating a Batch File
In your text editor add the batch command line interface to invoke eValid along with the corresponding arguments. For example, here is the file eValid.bat:

@ECHO OFF
REM
REM Batch file to have eValid play back a script that navigates
REM a site and sends an alarm if navigation exceeds 1000 ms.

evalid -B "Monitoring Demo.evs" -FF -CK 

The example launches eValid to play back the script Monitoring Demo.evs, with Dynamic Log Naming turned on, and with Empty Cache Before Playback turned on.

An available list of available command line options is available from Command Line Interface.

The command line switch definitions are also available within the product documentation by clicking Help > Documentation > User Manual > Technical > Details > Command Line

Save the file with a *.bat extension.

Step 3: Set-Up Windows Scheduler
Once the batch file has been completed, it must now be used in conjunction with the Windows Scheduler to create a true Monitoring Engine.

Here are some simple steps to follow when adding a batch file as a scheduled task in the scheduler:

1. Launch the scheduler or click on "Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks".
   
2. Click on "File > New > Scheduled Task" to start a new task to be added in scheduler.
   
3. Once the new schedule has been added, rename the schedule and double click the icon to set your preferences. Select the appropriate location for the batch files which were created earlier.
   
4. To change the schedule of when the command will be executed, click on the "Schedule" tab located beside the "Task" tab. The scheduled tasks can be run daily or however often the user feels it is necessary to run these scripts.
   
5. The final tab, Settings, lets the user have control of the other options available to scheduler.
   
6. Once the settings have been finalized, click on the apply button. Provided the settings are correct, the scheduler will prompt the user for the administrator password and will not continue to add the created task if the wrong password is supplied.
   
7. Once completed, the scheduled task appears in scheduler and will launch the program based on the settings specified. You may also want to check the specified folder in the batch file to confirm that the proper log files have been created for the specific schedule created.
   

Detailed instructions on how to add a batch file to the windows scheduler is available at the Windows NT Scheduler page.