Welcome to the Halo release! In nature, a halo is a ring of light surrounding a celestial body such as the sun or moon. We hope the new features introduced in our Halo release will help shine more light on the performance of your systems from all directions!
High-Frequency Heartbeat Test
The new Heartbeat Test enables SRE and DevOps teams to continuously validate service health and measure availability with high precision. Heartbeat Tests run as frequently as every five seconds, offering granular visibility into availability and triggering alerts the moment an issue arises.
This capability is especially valuable for teams managing SLOs and SLAs, as the increased data frequency provides a more accurate picture of service availability and customer impact. By detecting availability issues earlier, teams are better positioned to resolve problems promptly and meet uptime commitments.
The Heartbeat Test supports HTTP and API monitors, and can be run from Enterprise and select Cloud nodes.
*Note: These changes are dependent on Agent release
Node-to-Node - 100 Nodes Support
The Node-to-Node Test now enables you to monitor connections among up to 100 nodes, giving you more complete visibility into performance and availability across your entire network. By testing between all points of presence, you can see where latency, jitter, and packet loss occur throughout your network. The improved Node-to-Node Smartboard provides insight to help you maintain resilience, improve reliability, and optimize your global network.
In addition to increasing the number of nodes supported, we’ve made the following improvements to the Node-to-Node Smartboard:
- Significant improvement in page speed
- New report lists three worst-performing nodes
- Clicking on a cell draws a performance chart for just that node pair
- Clicking on a row or column draws a chart of that node’s destinations or sources
Private Benchmarks
In addition to our existing public benchmarks, which test major CDNs using a common configuration, we now offer private benchmarks. This allows you to run custom benchmark tests from your real users’ devices comparing performance and availability across different CDNs and origin servers. Doing so helps you proactively evaluate delivery infrastructure from the perspective of all users and geographies, providing a clear view of how your site performs in real-world conditions.
By running benchmarks tailored to your environment, you can identify the best-performing CDN or origin strategy, uncover regional performance differences, and ensure your site delivers consistent, reliable experiences to users everywhere.
Improved Search in Charm Bar
We've improved the search function in the charm bar to make your experience smoother and more efficient. Whether you're new to the portal and need to figure out where things are, or you just want to get things done faster, the improved search helps you find what you need and take action without the guesswork.
- Actionable Results: Search for a term and instantly see what you can do, like view alerts, open dashboards, or check service errors.
- Portal-wide search: We now provide search results across all these areas (tests, dashboards, apps, etc,) from one place.
Examples
- Search for a Test → View alerts triggered on that test.
- Search for a RUM app → See its records.
- Search for a Dashboard → Access its widgets.
- Search for an Endpoint → Navigate to its Smartboard.
Distributed Tracing
Infrastructure Overview Dashboard – Limited Preview
Powered by OpenTelemtry Metrics, the new Infrastructure Overview Dashboard delivers powerful observability by combining infrastructure data with Application Performance insights. This integrated view helps teams troubleshoot faster, optimize resources more intelligently, and deliver better user experiences. Supporting a wide range of metric types including custom business metrics, the dashboard lays the foundation for extensible, telemtry-driven visibility across your environment.
Using the Infrastructure Overview Dashboard you can:
- Detect early warning signs such as disk saturation, CPU spikes, memory leaks — before they degrade application performance
- Correlate performance traces with infrastructure metrics (CPU, memory, I/O, network latency) - isolating the root cause much faster when application issues arise.
Credentials Enhancements
Active/Inactive Status
We have added a configurable Active/Inactive status to Tokens, Passwords, and Certificates. If a credential is in an inactive state and is assigned to a test, the test will not run. When assigning credentials to a test, each credential will be displayed in a blue pill for “active” or a grey pill for “inactive", so you can ensure you are using an active credential.
Support for Additional Special Characters
Password/passphrase fields will now accept '<', '>', '&’, and ‘#' characters.
Playwright: Mobile Emulation*
We are pleased to introduce a new Mobile Emulation option, labeled "Mobile (New)”, in Web tests and “Mobile” in Playwright tests. This option leverages Catchpoint's Playwright monitor and ensures tests have the latest Mobile devices available in our Playwright package. We have also updated the scheduled and instant test API endpoints for managing Mobile Playwright tests.
*Note: These changes are dependent on Agent release
AI-Powered Support in Portal (Preview)
We are pleased to introduce the preview of our AI-powered support agent, available right in the Catchpoint Portal. Just click on the question mark in the top menu bar, select “AI Support”, and then ask the custom AI agent any questions. The agent will provide instant answers to questions, as well as support with basic scripting and troubleshooting, all drawing on its training on Catchpoint’s documentation and support knowledge base. It can also create a ticket on your behalf if you need human support.
This new feature is a supplement to our existing world-class human support team, who are always ready to help with any questions you may have.
In this example, the AI support agent generates a script based on a transaction, It is important to keep in mind that this capability is in preview, and like all AI agents, their responses may not be perfect, so please double-check anything that is important.
Terraform Plugin Framework Update
The Catchpoint Terraform Provider has been upgraded to leverage HashiCorp’s latest Terraform Plugin Framework. This modernization delivers a stronger, faster, and more future-ready foundation for teams automating Catchpoint configurations through Terraform.
Thanks to HashiCorp’s latest Terraform Plugin Framework, the Catchpoint Provider now gains:
- Greater reliability and stability.
- Clearer, more actionable error messages that simplify troubleshooting.
- Improved compatibility and performance across future Terraform versions and ecosystem tools.
This upgrade lays the groundwork for new automation capabilities, making it easier than ever to integrate Catchpoint monitoring into your infrastructure-as-code workflows
Important: The new Terraform Plugin Framework version (2.0.0) includes some breaking changes. To fully leverage the new capabilities, you’ll need to upgrade to this version. For details, please refer to KB article TERRAFORM PROVIDER 2.0.0 for more information.
REST API Updates
- The Alert Details endpoint has been updated to include Node Alert details.
- Corrected rate limit error being reported when usage is within threshold
- Resolved problem with test name/id reporting as “unknown” when using dimensions like StepName and HostIP in explorer raw endpoint
- Corrected issue where Dimension IDs Returned an error in Test Raw Data API Call
- Fixed occurrences of 500 errors on /v4/tests endpoint
- Added previously missing actions in v3.7
- Added PATCH alert endpoint missing from v3.4 to v4
REST API Versioning Policy
We support the latest stable version of our REST API, and the prior version for twelve months after a new version becomes stable. As of July 11, 2024, REST API v3 is the current stable version. REST API v4 is available in preview and may include breaking changes as it evolves.
To stay supported and take advantage of the latest improvements, we recommend keeping your integration up to date with the latest stable version.
Additional Features
Added ability to specify daily view limits for RUM apps
Now displaying duration of spans in the span chart in Service Smartboard
Updated CDN Benchmark tests to not run on bots
Additional Alert timeframe intervals of 20 and 45 mins
Support For SSL Tests added to Stack Map
*Note: These changes are dependent on Agent release
Bug Fixes
- [Endpoint Smartboard] Improved inconsistencies with how RTT, Loss, and Jitter are reported
- [Playwright/Puppeteer] Added Wait time metric to alerts
- [Control Center] Fixed issue where disabled inherited alerts in nested folders appeared active but didn’t trigger.
- [Integrations Page] Resolved issue where webhook request headers couldn’t be deleted
Catchpoint Agent Release
Some of the features in the release (where noted) require the latest version of the Catchpoint Agent to be running on the selected Node. The Catchpoint Agent rollout involves two dimensions:
- Public Nodes managed by Catchpoint: Agent rollout on public nodes takes place in stages following each release. Agent release announcements are posted here: https://nodestatus.catchpoint.com.
- Private Enterprise Nodes managed by customers: Customers can upgrade Enterprise Nodes any time at their convenience. We advise customers to upgrade Enterprise nodes promptly after each release to benefit from the new feature functionality.
- Instructions for upgrading Enterprise nodes can be found in the help documentation.