Enable Synthetic Test Metric Collection for Custom Dashboards

Summary:
We would like to request the ability to capture and store custom metrics gathered during the execution of synthetic tests in IBM Instana. These metrics, which can be extracted from SQL queries, API responses, or other synthetic test results, would be invaluable for creating custom dashboards and monitoring trends over time.

Current Limitation:
Currently, synthetic monitoring only supports success/failure assertions (OK/Not OK) for synthetic tests. While this is useful for alerting on immediate issues, it doesn't provide a way to leverage detailed performance metrics or data points retrieved during synthetic test execution. For example, during a stored procedure call in a synthetic test, we collect important metrics like the number of invalid logins, total logins, and thresholds. However, we cannot save these data points as custom metrics to track them over time or visualize them in dashboards.

Proposed Solution:
Add functionality to store custom metric values from synthetic tests. This could work by allowing users to define specific fields or values from the test results that can be automatically saved as metrics. These metrics would be accessible via Instana’s standard metric monitoring and visualization tools, allowing users to create custom dashboards and monitor performance or trends over time.

Use Case:
In our current setup, we run a synthetic test that calls a stored procedure to monitor login activities. We gather metrics such as:

• Total Logins

• Valid Logins

• Invalid Logins

• Threshold Percentage

It would be extremely beneficial to capture these metrics and use them to create custom Instana dashboards that provide insights into login trends, failure rates, and thresholds, enabling proactive monitoring and decision-making.

Value Proposition:

• Provides deeper insights from synthetic tests beyond simple pass/fail assertions.

• Allows for custom dashboards and long-term performance monitoring based on specific business-critical metrics.

• Facilitates proactive identification of trends and anomalies that can inform capacity planning, security monitoring, and operational adjustments.

Thank you for considering this feature, as it would greatly enhance the flexibility and power of synthetic monitoring in Instana.