<%NUMBERING1%>.<%NUMBERING2%>.<%NUMBERING3%> PRTG Manual: Common SaaS Sensor
The Common SaaS sensor monitors the availability of several software as a service (SaaS) providers. Because your business processes are more and more depending on cloud hosts, this sensor is important for unified monitoring. With this sensor, you can get alarms if your cloud services are not reachable anymore.
The sensor can show the following:
- Available services in percent
- Response times of the following SaaS providers:
- Bing
- Dropbox
- Facebook
- GitHub
- Google Apps
- Office 365
- Salesforce
- Twitter
- Youtube

Common SaaS Sensor
Sensor in Other Languages
- Dutch: Algemene SaaS
- French: SaaS courants
- German: Verbreitete SaaS-Dienste
- Japanese: Common SaaS
- Portuguese: Provedores SaaS Comuns
- Russian: Общий для SaaS
- Simplified Chinese: 常用 SaaS
- Spanish: SaaS común
Remarks
Add Sensor
The Add Sensor dialog appears when you manually add a new sensor to a device. It only shows the setting fields that are required for creating the sensor. Therefore, you do not see all setting fields in this dialog. You can change (nearly) all settings in the sensor's Settings tab later.
Select the SaaS checklists that you want to monitor. The sensor creates one channel for each service that you select in the Add Sensor dialog.
The following settings in the Add Sensor dialog differ in comparison to the sensor's Settings tab.
Common SaaS Specific
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SaaS Checklists
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Select the services that you want to monitor with this sensor. You see a list with the names of all available items. Select the items by adding check marks. The sensor creates one channel for each selection. You can also select all items or cancel the selection by using the check box in the table header.
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Basic Sensor Settings
Click the Settings tab of a sensor to change its settings.
Usually, a sensor connects to the IP Address or DNS Name of the parent device on which you created the sensor. See the device settings for details. For some sensors, you can explicitly define the monitoring target in the sensor settings. See below for details on available settings.
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Sensor Name
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Enter a meaningful name to identify the sensor. By default, PRTG shows this name in the device tree, as well as in alarms, logs, notifications, reports, maps, libraries, and tickets.
If the name contains angle brackets (<>), PRTG replaces them with braces ({}) for security reasons. For more information, see the Knowledge Base: What security features does PRTG include?
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Parent Tags
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Shows tags that the sensor inherits from its parent device, parent group, and parent probe. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.
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Tags
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Enter one or more tags. Confirm each tag with the Spacebar key, a comma, or the Enter key. You can use tags to group objects and use tag-filtered views later on. Tags are not case-sensitive. Tags are automatically inherited.
It is not possible to enter tags with a leading plus (+) or minus (-) sign, nor tags with parentheses (()) or angle brackets (<>).
The sensor has the following default tags that are automatically predefined in the sensor's settings when you add the sensor:
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Priority
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Select a priority for the sensor. This setting determines the position of the sensor in lists. The highest priority is at the top of a list. Choose from the lowest priority ( ) to the highest priority ( ).
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Debug Options
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Result Handling
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Define what PRTG does with the sensor result:
- Discard result: Do not store the sensor result.
- Store result: Store the last sensor result in the \Logs\sensors subfolder of the PRTG data directory on the probe system. The file names are Result of Sensor [ID].txt and Result of Sensor [ID].Data.txt. This setting is for debugging purposes. PRTG overwrites these files with each scanning interval.
This option is not available when the sensor runs on the hosted probe of a PRTG hosted by Paessler instance.
In a cluster, PRTG stores the result in the PRTG data directory of the master node.
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Sensor Display
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Primary Channel
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Select a channel from the list to define it as the primary channel. In the device tree, the last value of the primary channel is always displayed below the sensor's name. The available options depend on what channels are available for this sensor.
You can set a different primary channel later by clicking below a channel gauge on the sensor's Overview tab.
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Graph Type
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Define how different channels are shown for this sensor:
- Show channels independently (default): Show a graph for each channel.
- Stack channels on top of each other: Stack channels on top of each other to create a multi-channel graph. This generates a graph that visualizes the different components of your total traffic.
You cannot use this option in combination with manual Vertical Axis Scaling (available in the channel settings).
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Stack Unit
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This setting is only visible if you enable Stack channels on top of each other as Graph Type. Select a unit from the list. All channels with this unit are stacked on top of each other. By default, you cannot exclude single channels from stacking if they use the selected unit. However, there is an advanced procedure to do so.
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Inherited Settings
By default, all of the following settings are inherited from objects that are higher in the hierarchy. You should change them centrally in the root group settings if necessary. To change a setting for this object only, click
under the corresponding setting name to disable the inheritance. You then see the options described below.
For more information, see section Inheritance of Settings.
Scanning Interval
Click
to interrupt the inheritance.
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Scanning Interval
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Select a scanning interval from the dropdown list. The scanning interval determines the amount of time that the sensor waits between two scans. Choose from:
- 30 seconds
- 60 seconds
- 5 minutes
- 10 minutes
- 15 minutes
- 30 minutes
- 1 hour
- 4 hours
- 6 hours
- 12 hours
- 1 day
You can change the available intervals in the system administration on PRTG on premises installations.
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If a Sensor Query Fails
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Select the number of scanning intervals that the sensor has time to reach and to check a device again if a sensor query fails. Depending on the option that you select, the sensor can try to reach and to check a device again several times before the sensor shows the Down status. This can avoid false alarms if the monitored device only has temporary issues. For previous scanning intervals with failed requests, the sensor shows the Warning status. Choose from:
- Set sensor to down immediately: Set the sensor to the Down status immediately after the first request fails.
- Set sensor to warning for 1 interval, then set to down (recommended): Set the sensor to the Warning status after the first request fails. If the second request also fails, the sensor shows the Down status.
- Set sensor to warning for 2 intervals, then set to down: Set the sensor to the Down status only after the third request fails.
- Set sensor to warning for 3 intervals, then set to down: Set the sensor to the Down status only after the fourth request fails.
- Set sensor to warning for 4 intervals, then set to down: Set the sensor to the Down status only after the fifth request fails.
- Set sensor to warning for 5 intervals, then set to down: Set the sensor to the Down status only after the sixth request fails.
Sensors that monitor via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) always wait at least one scanning interval before they show the Down status. It is not possible to immediately set a WMI sensor to the Down status, so the first option does not apply to these sensors. All other options can apply.
If you define error limits for a sensor's channels, the sensor immediately shows the Down status. None of the interval options apply.
If a channel uses lookup values, the sensor immediately shows the Down status. None of the interval options apply.
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Access Rights
Click
to interrupt the inheritance.
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User Group Access
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Define the user groups that have access to the sensor. You see a table with user groups and group access rights. The table contains all user groups in your setup. For each user group, you can choose from the following group access rights:
- Inherited: Inherit the access rights settings of the parent object.
- No access: Users in this user group cannot see or edit the sensor. The sensor neither shows up in lists nor in the device tree.
- Read access: Users in this group can see the sensor and view its monitoring results. They cannot edit any settings.
- Write access: Users in this group can see the sensor, view its monitoring results, and edit its settings. They cannot edit its access rights settings.
- Full access: Users in this group can see the sensor, view its monitoring results, edit its settings, and edit its access rights settings.
For more details on access rights, see section Access Rights Management.
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Sensor Settings Overview
For more information about sensor settings, see the following sections: