Proactive Synthetic Monitoring

Know What’s Happened Before Anyone Logs In

Test your virtual desktops, SaaS apps, and critical infrastructure around the clock, so IT knows about an outage before the first employee notices.

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Always Available, Always Verified

Employees count on their technology working every time they need it. Proactive synthetic monitoring continuously tests the availability of devices and services, so IT knows when they're healthy and is alerted as soon as they aren’t. Verifying that the services employees rely on stay available and working is one of the ways ControlUp delivers endpoint compliance and a better digital employee experience.

Tested Before Anyone Logs In

Tests run around the clock from the cloud or your own data center. When one fails often enough to matter, by your definition, the right team hears about it through the channels they already use, with the timing data and screenshots to start fixing immediately.

Know Every Virtual Desktop Is Ready Before the Shift Starts

A broker can appear healthy even when the logon path behind it is broken. Synthetic logon tests published VDI and DaaS resources end-to-end, as often as every 5 minutes, across Citrix VDI and DaaS, Omnissa Horizon, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365. Tests run through the gateways your employees use, including Citrix Cloud Gateway Service, NetScaler Gateway, Horizon UAG, and Workspace ONE. Each result shows timing for every connection stage, multi-hop latency, and an end-of-test screenshot, so you see exactly where a logon failed.

Confirm Critical SaaS Workflows Work, Click by Click

A homepage that loads doesn’t mean the workflow behind it works. Web transaction tests replay the multi-step flows your employees depend on, recording them in minutes with a browser plug-in and running them as often as every minute. Built-in templates cover Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, and generic site loads. Deeper checks validate SSL certificates and days to expiry, HTTP status codes, and expected response content.

Watch the Infrastructure Everything Depends On

When DNS slows, or an identity service lags, every downstream app feels it. Built-in tests for DNS, TCP and UDP ports, ping, traceroute, HTTP/S, and shell execution run as often as every minute. Dedicated Microsoft Entra ID tests measure query response times with request and traceroute detail. Run them from globally distributed cloud locations, or from inside your own data center for resources that aren’t public.

Alerts That Mean Something

An alert that fires on every blip gets ignored. Alert policies combine failure counts and metric conditions, so you decide how many successive tests must fail before anyone is paged. When it’s real, the right team hears about it instantly via email, webhooks, Microsoft Teams, or ControlUp with ServiceNow, and again when the service recovers. A daily summary email rounds up everything affected in the last 24 hours.

Key Features

VDI and DaaS logon tests

End-to-end synthetic logons across Citrix, Omnissa Horizon, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365.

Web transaction tests

Recorded multi-step SaaS and web flows replayed on schedule.

Built-in SaaS templates

Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, and generic site load tests out of the box.

Network and infrastructure tests

DNS, TCP and UDP ports, ping, traceroute, HTTP/S, and shell execution.

Microsoft Entra ID tests

Query response times with HTTP request and traceroute details.

Custom alert conditions

Failure counts and combined metric thresholds that decide when an alert fires.

Cloud or on-premises test locations

Global cloud locations, plus your own for internal resources.

Dashboards and history

Uptime, health over time, and up to a year of test results.

Explore the Products
This Capability Powers

This capability is included in the ControlUp products below. Each one brings it together with related features for a specific part of your digital workplace.

ControlUp for Desktops: Score Over Time chart, All Employees and Overall Experience Score ControlUp for VDI: Running Hosts, Total Machines, Data Free Space and Active Sessions ControlUp for Apps: Apps by usage hours and unused license cost

ControlUp for
Desktops

ControlUp
for VDI

ControlUp
for Apps

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FAQs
What is proactive synthetic monitoring?
Synthetic monitoring runs scripted tests that act like a user, such as logging in to a virtual desktop or completing a SaaS workflow, on a fixed schedule. Because tests run whether or not anyone is working, this type of proactive IT monitoring detects outages and slowdowns before employees are affected.
How is synthetic monitoring different from real-user monitoring?
Real-user monitoring measures the experience of active sessions. Synthetic monitoring tests availability on a schedule, including off-hours. ControlUp does both, so IT sees how work feels now and knows services are ready before the next shift logs in.
Which applications and platforms can ControlUp’s synthetic monitoring tools test?
Citrix, Omnissa Horizon, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365 desktops and apps; Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, and any web or SaaS app through recorded transactions; and infrastructure services through DNS, port, ping, traceroute, HTTP/S, and Entra ID tests.
Can we test internal resources that aren't publicly accessible?
Yes. Set up test locations in your own data center that securely upload results to the ControlUp cloud, alongside the built-in cloud locations.
How often do tests run?
Web, SaaS, and infrastructure tests can run as often as every minute. VDI and DaaS tests can run as often as every five minutes.