Monitoring Automation Systems That Actually Work

The best automation system in the world is useless if you don't know when it fails. Monitoring automation systems requires more than just checking if they're running—it requires understanding execution, performance, and failure modes.

What to Monitor

• Execution status: Is the automation running? When did it last run?
• Success/failure rates: How often does it succeed? How often does it fail?
• Performance metrics: How long does it take? Are there performance degradations?
• Error patterns: What errors occur? Are they transient or permanent?

Building Effective Alerts

Alerts should be actionable, not noisy. Set up alerts for:

• Automation failures (not just errors, but actual failures)
• Performance degradation (slower than expected)
• Missing executions (automation didn't run when it should have)
• Error rate spikes (sudden increase in errors)

Conclusion

Good monitoring means you know about problems before users do. Build observability into your automation systems from the start.