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Creating and managing Heartbeats

The Heartbeats feature is currently only available to Beta Testers. If you think your application is a good candidate, send an email to support@appsignal.com!

Before configuring your app to send Heartbeats, you first need to create a Heartbeat in AppSignal.

Create Heartbeat

To create a Heartbeat in the AppSignal app, you will need to use the same name you used when configuring the background process.

  1. Navigate to the Heartbeats page in AppSignal
  2. Click "Add Heartbeat"
  3. Complete the Heartbeats form:
  • Name: Then the name of the job you are monitoring. You will need this name when configuring heartbeats.
  • Crontab: AppSignal uses crontab/cron syntax for scheduling heartbeats. You can learn more about the crontab syntax in our Crontab Learning Center article.
  • Server timezone: The timezone of the server the jobs you are monitoring are processed on. We recommend always having your server set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). You can learn more about using UTC in our UTC learning center article.
  • Maximum job duration: The max run-time of your job, in minutes. This is used to notify you of missed, or late jobs. For example, if set to 5 minutes:
    • The job will be reported as missed if no heartbeat is received within 5 minutes of the job's scheduled start time.
    • The job will be reported as late if a heartbeat is received more than 5 minutes after the job's scheduled start time.
  • Description: A description of what the job you are monitoring does.
  • Alerts: Configure where AppSignal notifies you of missed or late jobs.
Screenshot of Heartbeats form

Once created, you need to configure your app to send heartbeats to AppSignal.

Manage Heartbeats

This section covers how to:

How to view all Heartbeats

To view all of your app's heartbeats click on the Heartbeats overview via the AppSignal app navigation:

Screenshot of Heartbeats overview

Clicking on the name of a heartbeat will take you to the heartbeat's occurrence overview.

How to edit a Heartbeat

To manage a Heartbeat's settings:

  1. Navigate to the Heartbeats feature in the AppSignal app.
  2. Click on the name of the Heartbeat you want to change the settings of.
  3. Click on "Edit":
  4. Modify your heartbeat's settings

How to remove a Heartbeat

To remove a heartbeat, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the name of the Heartbeat you want to remove.
  2. On the Heartbeat overview page click "Remove", and follow the on-screen instructions.