Cron check quickstart

By the end of this guide you’ll have a cron check expecting a ping every 24 hours, your job sending the ping, and a verified failure → alert path.

1. Create the cron check

Dashboard

1. Monitors → New → Cron check.

2. Configure:

   • Friendly name: Nightly backup.
   • Expected interval: 1 day (86400 seconds).
   • Notification groups: pick your default group.

3. Save. The check page now shows a unique ping URL at the top.

API

curl -X POST https://api.siteqwality.com/cron/job \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "friendly_name": "Nightly backup",
    "check_interval_seconds": 86400,
    "group_notification_ids": ["<group-id>"]
  }'

The response includes id, account_id, and the inferred ping URL: https://ping.siteqwality.com/<account_id>/<id>.

2. Wire your job to ping

Add a single line to the end of your job, after the work has succeeded.

# Bash — at the end of nightly_backup.sh
PING_URL="https://ping.siteqwality.com/<account-id>/<cron-job-id>"

if pg_dump $DB > backup.sql && aws s3 cp backup.sql s3://backups/; then
  curl -fsS --max-time 10 --retry 3 "$PING_URL" || true
fi

# Python
import requests

PING_URL = "https://ping.siteqwality.com/acct_abc123/job_xyz789"

def ping():
    try:
        requests.post(PING_URL, timeout=10)
    except requests.RequestException:
        pass  # never let the ping failure kill the job

# At the end of your job
do_backup()
ping()

// Node
const PING_URL = "https://ping.siteqwality.com/acct_abc123/job_xyz789";

async function ping() {
  try {
    await fetch(PING_URL, { method: "POST" });
  } catch {
    // intentional swallow — don't let ping failures break the job
  }
}

await doBackup();
await ping();

Tip

Ping at the end of the job, after work succeeds. Pinging at the start gives you a “the job started” signal, but masks the case where the job started and then crashed. Most users want the success-confirming variant.

3. Verify the heartbeat lands

Dashboard

The check’s Recent pings list shows each received ping with timestamp and source IP within seconds.

API

curl https://api.siteqwality.com/cron/job/$JOB_ID/recent \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY"

Returns the most recent receipts.

4. Force a failure

To verify the alerting path:

1. Edit the cron check, drop check_interval_seconds to 300 (5 minutes).
2. Don’t ping for 10 minutes.
3. The check flips to failed, an incident opens, your notification group fires.
4. Send a ping manually (curl <ping-url>). The check flips back to success and the incident auto-resolves.

Don’t forget to set the interval back to 86400 when done testing.

What’s next

Heartbeat best practices Retries, jitter, idempotency, and start-vs-end pinging.

Grace periods How SiteQwality decides 'late enough to alert.'