Skip to main content

Set up monitoring

  • Updated

Who can use this feature?

  • Organization administrators and workspace administrators.
  • Available for all packages.

When you set up monitoring on a website, you’re scheduling regular automated scans that start without prompting. Monitoring evaluates your website, shows your remediation progress, and graphs your accessibility health trend over time using the same scan options.

Restrictions:

  • Monitoring isn't available for apps.
  • You can't run a monitoring scan on pages protected by a VPN. To test VPN-protected pages, use our browser extension or developer tools.
  • PDF Discovery is only available for single page and crawl monitoring.
  • You can't run monitoring scans on single page applications or .aspx webpages.

On this page:

Quick setup

Quick setup allows you to start monitoring your website with little effort. The testing tool, conformance level, and viewport size are set by default and you only need to set the recurrence and start on date. Quick setup uses the web crawler, so the testing tool always checks the most up to date version of your website.

To set up monitoring using Quick setup:

  1. Go to Websites/apps.
  2. Select the website you want to set up monitoring for.
  3. Select Monitoring.
  4. Select Monitoring settings.
  5. Select the recurrence.
  6. Choose the start on date. This is the date of your first monitoring scan.
  7. Select Save.
The results of your first monitoring scan may take some time to generate. Check back later to review your results!

Advanced setup

You can only enter webpages from the available domains associated with your website. Available domains are listed under 1 - Scope.

Advanced setup has more options than Quick setup. You can choose crawl depth, specific pages to monitor, the conformance level, and more. Use advanced setup to get the most impactful data from your monitoring scans.

Go to advanced setup

To set up monitoring using advanced setup:

  1. Go to Websites/apps.
  2. Select the website you want to set up monitoring for.
  3. Select Monitoring.
  4. Select Monitoring settings.
  5. Choose Advanced setup.

Step 1: Set the scope

Pages where the only URL difference is query parameters count as separate pages.

There are three page discovery methods:

  • Crawl
  • Sitemap
  • List of pages

Crawl

This option automatically compiles and scans multiple pages from your website based on custom parameters. This is helpful when you don’t know which pages to scan or want a larger sample of pages from across your site. Using the crawl option, you can get the most current accessibility data from your website without providing or updating specific pages to scan.

The website crawler scans subpages in the order they are listed on the website, left to right and top to bottom. There is no limit on crawl depth, and you can scan up to your package limits.

To set up the web crawler for your monitoring scan:

  1. Under Page discovery method, select Crawl.
  2. Enter:
    • The start page. For example, https://example.com.
    • The maximum number of pages.
    • The crawl depth.
  3. Optional steps:
    • Deselect Skip URL # endings. Skip URL # endings stops the scanner from scanning similar pages differentiated by number signs (#).
    • Deselect Skip URL ? endings. Skip URL ? endings stops the scanner from scanning similar pages differentiated by a question mark in the URL.
    • To exclude certain pages, select Exclude pages. Enter one or more words from the URL(s) of the pages you want to exclude. For example, enter "support" to exclude any pages that contain "support" in the URL.
    • If the webpage requires login information, select Add authentication details.
    • To add a header request, select Modify headers.
    • If the page has popups, select Close popups and enter the popup close button CSS selector. How do I find this information?
    • If you want to add a wait time, select Add wait time and enter the amount of time you want the scanner to wait before scanning.
  4. Select Step 2.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a .xml file that lists your website’s essential pages.

To set up monitoring using a sitemap:

  1. Under Page discovery method, select Sitemap.
  2. Enter the URL to your sitemap. For example, sitemap.xml
  3. Optional steps:
    • To exclude certain pages, select Exclude pages. Enter one or more words from the URL(s) of the pages you want to exclude. For example, enter "support" to exclude any pages that contain "support" in the URL.
    • If the webpage requires login information, select Add authentication details.
    • To add a header request, select Modify headers.
    • If the page has popups, select Close popups and enter the popup close button CSS selector. How do I find this information?
  4. Select Step 2.

List of pages

List of pages allows you to enter a specific set of pages you want monitored.

To add your list of pages:

  1. Under Page discovery method, select List of pages.
  2. Enter the URLs of the webpages you want to monitor.
  3. Optional steps:
    • If the webpage requires login information, select Add authentication details.
    • To add a header request, select Modify headers.
    • If the page has popups, select Close popups and enter the popup close button CSS selector. How do I find this information?
    • If you want to add a wait time, select Add wait time and enter the amount of time you want the scanner to wait before scanning.
  4. Select Step 2.

Step 2: Set the scan schedule

To set the scan schedule:

  1. Select the recurrence.
  2. Choose the start on date. This is the date of your first monitoring scan.
  3. Select Step 3.

Step 3: Choose the scan settings

Monitoring scans use your default testing tool.

To set up scan settings:

  1. Select the WCAG conformance level and version.
  2. Choose the viewport size.
  3. Select Step 4.

Step 4: Configure email alerts

To stay updated with your monitoring score, you can set up email alerts for up to 10 recipients. The alerts are customizable by recipient. Monitoring has the following email alerts:

  • Scan completed
  • Scan drops below the percent
  • Scan drops below the previous score by percent
Email alerts are only available for users in the workspace. Email addresses not associated with a user in the workspace won't receive monitoring alerts.

Add recipients

To add recipients:

  1. Select Add another recipient.
  2. Enter the recipient's email.
  3. Choose the alert(s) you want them to receive. Note that for scan drop alerts, you need to enter a threshold.
  4. Select Save recipient.
  5. If you’re done setting up email alerts, select Step 5.

Add additional alerts

To add additional alerts:

  1. Find the recipient and select Edit.
  2. Choose the alert(s) you want them to receive. Note that for scan drop alerts, you need to enter a threshold.
  3. Select Save recipient.
  4. If you’re done setting up email alerts, select Step 5.

Step 5: Review and save your settings

Before saving your monitoring settings, carefully review the scope, schedule, scan settings, and email alerts.

If something needs correcting:

  • Select Edit and make the changes.

If you’re ready to start monitoring:

  • Select Save.
The results of your first monitoring scan may take some time to generate. Check back later to review your results!

Related to

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Article is closed for comments.