Check-ins

AppSignal check-ins provide visibility into the state of background processes such as Cron Jobs. AppSignal Check-ins help answer questions like:

• ✅ Did my background job run?
• ✅ Did my background job fail?
• ✅ Are my background jobs running as scheduled?

Once configured, AppSignal will track background processes, giving insights into individual runs and notifying you if a process doesn't notify us of completion.

This documentation will guide you through the following:

• How Check-ins work
• Check-ins setup steps

How Check-ins work

Check-ins help you monitor jobs by telling AppSignal when a job starts and ends.

In AppSignal you define the cron schedule of the processes you wish to monitor and what the maximal desired runtime for the process is, for example, an hourly job with a maximal run-time of 30 minutes.

AppSignal then uses your job's cron schedule and creates occurrences for when each job is scheduled to run. Check-ins communicate to AppSignal when a job's occurrence has started and finished.

AppSignal is then able to notify you if a job doesn't start on time, at all, or if it exceeds the desired runtime on an occurrence level, helping you ensure vital background processes are being reliably executed.

Check-ins setup steps

1. Create a Check-in in AppSignal
2. Send Check-ins from your background job to AppSignal:
   • Send Check-ins via API
   • Send Check-ins via AppSignal Integrations
3. Monitor Check-in Occurrences in AppSignal

Additional resources

To help you understand cron/crontab syntax and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) we recommend reading the following AppSignal Learning Center articles:

• Why should my app and server use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)?
• How can I use the cron syntax to schedule cron jobs?