Synthetic User Monitoring generally requires a good knowledge of multiple types of coding as well as the software components you are going to be using. The RapidSpike script editor makes this significantly simpler even for complex user journeys!
Once you have added a user journey into your account, navigate to the ‘Script Editor’. This blank screen is where you will be building your journey.
Setup
Before proceeding to the journey script we have a few setup options. You might not know the settings you need yet but knowing the options available is beneficial if you encounter issues further down the line.
Clicking into the ‘Edit’ tab will bring open a new window outlining the path of the stating URL, Viewport size and a number of pre-start actions:
- Cookie
- Generate Item
- Pick Item
- API Call
- Retrieve Secrets
- Viewport Size
These tools primary offer access to your site, stop pop-ups from appearing and tools for randomisation
The script is separated into two sections, Steps and Actions.
Steps
‘Steps’ outline the thing you are trying to do and house the actions. For example if you are clicking a product the step might be ‘Add Apple to Cart’ and inside that will be the actions for physically loading the page, clicking and capturing.
To add a step click the ‘Start Writing a Script’ button. This will create a few examples steps.
We recommend one step per page as a webpage test is conducted for each step (Which can be viewed in the ‘Test Result’ once published). For more complex journeys such as a lengthy form we would also recommend splitting this up into steps to make it easier to debug and see clearly what is going on.
Actions
Within these steps are ‘Actions’ which perform the tasks on your site. There are common actions which make up the majority of journeys and some more advanced actions for more complicated journey functions.
The common actions are the first you need to know and are:
- Capture – Captures an image of the current page
- Click – Performs a click on an element
- Form – Inputs text into multiple input fields within a form
- Mouseover – Hovers over an element such as to make a menu visible
- SendKeys – Input text within an input field
- WaitForElement – Wait for an element to be visible or clickable before proceeding to the next action
These actions will make up the majority of your journey and allow you to navigate the site as well as perform functions such as login, payment, filling in forms and more.
The other actions essentially include all other functions such as adding cookies, randomisation tools, IFrames and more.
The other actions are listed below:
- AddCookie
- Alert
- APICall
- CheckCookie
- ClickCoordinates
- Dropdown
- Execute
- Exit
- FormSelector
- GenerateItem
- IfAssert
- Navigate
- Open
- PageSource
- PickItem
- RetrieveSecrets
- SwitchJQuery Access
- SwitchToWindow
- SwitchToIFrame
- SwitchToDefault
- ViewportSize
- Wait
- WaitForElementText
- WaitForTitle
- WaitForUrl
