Field notes
A 200 status code tells you the server answered. It does not tell you the response was correct, came back in time, or passed authentication. A status check misses a whole class of failures: an expired token, a rate limit, a slow dependency, or a partial outage where one route fails and the rest still work.
The guides in this category cover what to measure on an API you run, such as response time percentiles and 4xx versus 5xx error rates, and how to hear early when an API you depend on starts failing. One post covers Microsoft's retirement of Basic Auth for SMTP in Exchange Online, which matters if your monitoring sends alert email through Exchange. Start with the best practices guide, then read the others in the order below. For what Visual Sentinel's endpoint checks do, see the API monitoring page.
Showing 4 articles. Page 1 of 1.
Third-party outages can cascade into website downtime. This guide shows how to get alerts when a SaaS dependency degrades: status aggregators with early warnings, checks on the vendor endpoints you rely on, and website checks for DNS, SSL and visual changes.
API performance monitoring observes endpoint response time, errors and request volume. Compare those observations with website checks to investigate availability and performance problems.
Microsoft is retiring Basic Auth for SMTP AUTH in Exchange Online. Audit email clients and alert integrations, test their supported authentication methods, and check website monitoring apart from SMTP configuration.
API downtime can jump sharply in a year, and many incidents go undetected until users are impacted. Learn the essential API monitoring best practices to ensure reliability and performance in 2026.
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