🎭 Oracle APM Now Supports Playwright – Your Browser Monitoring Just Got a Major Upgrade

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has rolled out a powerful new capability that modernizes how you monitor and troubleshoot web applications: Playwright support in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Synthetic Monitoring.

Released in June 10 2025, this update introduces the ability to create, schedule, and run synthetic scripts using Playwright — a fast-growing, developer-friendly framework for end-to-end browser testing.

For developers, SREs, and QA teams seeking cross-browser reliability and rich automation, this update brings world-class observability for web frontends — natively within the OCI APM suite.

What’s New?

With Playwright support, Oracle APM Synthetic Monitoring can now:

✅ Run synthetic browser checks using JavaScript-based Playwright scripts
✅ Simulate user flows across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit
✅ Monitor availability, latency, and interaction fidelity
✅ Automate end-to-end testing of login flows, carts, dashboards, and more
✅ Use flexible scheduling, alerts, and log capture within OCI

This aligns OCI APM with modern testing trends, helping enterprises validate real-world UX in CI/CD pipelines and live environments alike.

Why Playwright?

Playwright, created by Microsoft, is gaining popularity for its:

• Cross-browser automation

• Native support for iframes, tabs, file uploads

• Fast parallel execution

• Integrated debugging features (tracing, snapshots, videos)

Combining Playwright with APM means synthetics are no longer basic uptime checks — they become dynamic simulations of your users’ journeys, tracked in real time and visualized in Oracle’s APM dashboards.

How to Get Started – Create a Playwright Script in APM

Here’s a quick guide to create and run your first Playwright script within OCI APM:

✅ Step 1: Create a New Script

Navigate to Observability & Management > APM > Synthetic Monitoring
Click "Create Script", then choose Script Type: Playwright

You’ll see an editor pre-populated with a sample:

const { chromium } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromium.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await page.screenshot({ path: 'example.png' });
  await browser.close();
})();

You can customize this to simulate login, search, checkout, or any critical user journey.

✅ Step 2: Define Monitors

Once the script is created:

• Define a Monitor that uses your script

• Choose monitoring intervals (e.g., every 5 min)

• Select locations from which the script should run

• Configure alert rules and notifications

✅ Step 3: Observe and Act

Oracle APM provides:

📊 Metrics: Uptime, response time, element load times
📋 Logs: Console output, page errors
🧪 Visuals: Screenshots for every run (optional)
📣 Alerts: Triggered if threshold conditions fail

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Real-World Use Cases

🚦 Checkout Flow Monitoring
Run synthetic Playwright scripts to simulate cart → payment flows across browsers.

🔐 Login Health
Test authentication, MFA, and redirects every 5 minutes from 5 geographies.

🧹 Regression Testing in CI/CD
Integrate OCI APM synthetic tests into your DevOps pipeline for pre-release validation.

🧯 Incident Troubleshooting
Use screenshots, timing data, and logs from synthetic monitors to triage incidents fast.

Useful Links

• 📘 Release Notes – Playwright Support in APM

• 📘 Create Synthetic Monitoring Script – Official Docs

Final Thoughts

With Playwright support, Oracle APM now offers one of the most developer-friendly and enterprise-ready synthetic monitoring tools in the cloud.

You’re not just checking uptime — you're validating experience.
You’re not just running tests — you're protecting digital trust.

Whether you’re a frontend engineer, SRE, or QA lead, this upgrade puts browser automation + observability in one powerful console.