Set Up Alerting / Uptime Monitoring for Meeting Room Displays
In this article, we will connect the service UptimeRobot to Meeting Room 365 to enable alerting and uptime alerts for Meeting Room displays that go offline.
The same instructions can be used with a variety of alternative services. We chose UptimeRobot because it is simple, free, and widely used.
Using an external monitoring service has other benefits. For example, it reduces the potential for an alerting service running on our infrastructure to be impacted by the same issues as our services, in the event of an outage.
For each display, you can construct a monitoring URL that will return an error response once your display has been offline for 15 minutes.
The format is:
Where DISPLAY_KEY is your display key.
For example, here is the display on our homepage: https://states.mr365.co/isOnline/fooallbars
It will return ok (200 status code) if the display is online. It will return a 500 status code (Display offline) if it is offline.
This makes it simple to configure a third-party monitoring service to alert your team (using your existing infrastructure) if someone switches off a display, or a tablet goes offline.
You can know about potential issues before your users report them.
Before you get started, you will need to head to the My Settings page of UptimeRobot to create an alert contact. This can be an email or text message alert, but Twitter, Slack, Teams, Google Hangouts, Telegram, and Zapier are also supported.
In UptimeRobot, select Add New Monitor.
Next, select monitor type HTTP.
Your monitoring interval can be whatever you like. Shorter values will alert you more quickly, while longer values will reduce the number of false positives you receive (that might interrupt you with a false alarm).
You can name your monitor whatever you wish.
The URL should match the URL we created in the previous step.
That's it! You can repeat the step for each meeting room display you wish to setup monitoring for.
Here is what the monitoring page looks like when a display is online, and offline:
You can set up a public status page under the My Settings page of UptimeRobot. These can be shared anywhere to show the status of your displays (you could set up a slackbot command, for example, to link to your display statuses).
Here is an example of our public status page from UptimeRobot (for our services, not meeting room displays: https://status.meetingroom365.com/)
The same instructions can be used with a variety of alternative services. We chose UptimeRobot because it is simple, free, and widely used.
Using an external monitoring service has other benefits. For example, it reduces the potential for an alerting service running on our infrastructure to be impacted by the same issues as our services, in the event of an outage.
Meeting Room 365 Monitoring URLs
For each display, you can construct a monitoring URL that will return an error response once your display has been offline for 15 minutes.
The format is:
https://states.mr365.co/isOnline/DISPLAY_KEYWhere DISPLAY_KEY is your display key.
For example, here is the display on our homepage: https://states.mr365.co/isOnline/fooallbars
It will return ok (200 status code) if the display is online. It will return a 500 status code (Display offline) if it is offline.
This makes it simple to configure a third-party monitoring service to alert your team (using your existing infrastructure) if someone switches off a display, or a tablet goes offline.
You can know about potential issues before your users report them.
Setting up alert contacts in UptimeRobot
Before you get started, you will need to head to the My Settings page of UptimeRobot to create an alert contact. This can be an email or text message alert, but Twitter, Slack, Teams, Google Hangouts, Telegram, and Zapier are also supported.
Setting up a monitor in UptimeRobot
In UptimeRobot, select Add New Monitor.
Next, select monitor type HTTP.
Your monitoring interval can be whatever you like. Shorter values will alert you more quickly, while longer values will reduce the number of false positives you receive (that might interrupt you with a false alarm).
You can name your monitor whatever you wish.
The URL should match the URL we created in the previous step.
That's it! You can repeat the step for each meeting room display you wish to setup monitoring for.
Status Pages
Here is what the monitoring page looks like when a display is online, and offline:
Display Online
Display Online
Setting up public status pages
You can set up a public status page under the My Settings page of UptimeRobot. These can be shared anywhere to show the status of your displays (you could set up a slackbot command, for example, to link to your display statuses).
Here is an example of our public status page from UptimeRobot (for our services, not meeting room displays: https://status.meetingroom365.com/)
Updated on: 23/07/2020
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