Silent failures — like missed cron jobs, database crashes, or backup issues — can cause real damage if they go unnoticed. Traditional monitoring often focuses on requests and server metrics but misses crucial background processes. This creates a significant monitoring blind spot where critical elements of your application can fail without immediate detection.

To help eliminate this blind spot, we've introduced AppSignal Wrap. AppSignal Wrap enables you to monitor key background processes and catch failures early, keeping your app running smoothly and safeguarding user experience.

Why Use AppSignal Wrap?

AppSignal Wrap helps you answer important questions about the health of your application's background tasks, such as:

By proactively tracking these processes, you can quickly address issues and reduce downtime.

What Does Wrap Track?

We've designed Wrap to help you monitor processes like cron jobs, your database server, and any other critical processes related to your application.

Once configured, Wrap helps you keep an eye on your background processes and will:

Avoiding Chaos With Wrap

Let's imagine you're running an e-commerce app that sells stroopwafels. Creating orders and processing payments are critical tasks that must run smoothly: customers have to get the stroopwafels they paid for, and you should avoid accidentally shipping out freebies.

A background job takes care of payments and fulfillment, but what if it fails silently? Orders could stall, payments might not go through, inventory updates could become inaccurate, etc. You could end up with frustrated customers, or suddenly run out of stock.

With AppSignal Wrap, you can:

By tracking these behind-the-scenes processes, AppSignal helps keep your stroopwafel business running smoothly, allowing you to focus on day-to-day development instead of chasing down hidden issues.

How To Set Up Wrap

We've made getting started with Wrap easy. First make sure you have your AppSignal app-level API key, which you can find in your AppSignal settings.

1. Install Wrap

The easiest way to get started with Wrap is to install it with the following command:

curl -sSL https://github.com/appsignal/appsignal-wrap/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sudo sh

Alternatively, you can download the latest Wrap release from GitHub.

2. Wrap Processes with appsignal-wrap

To monitor a process, simply pass the command you want to track with appsignal-wrap like this:

export APPSIGNAL_APP_LEVEL_API_KEY=[APP_LEVEL_API_KEY]
appsignal-wrap [NAME] -- [COMMAND]

Replace [NAME] with an identifier for the process and [COMMAND] with the command you want to monitor. For example:

appsignal-wrap payment-script -- bash /var/app/backup.sh

This will track the process of the payment-script and report logs and errors to AppSignal.

In short: If something goes wrong with payment-script, AppSignal will alert you.

Send Check-ins to AppSignal With Wrap

AppSignal Check-ins keep you in the loop about your background processes, like cron jobs or long-running tasks, by sending updates on their status. They help you spot problems early and ensure everything's running as intended.

By default, appsignal-wrap doesn't send any check-ins, but it's easy to enable them using the --cron or --heartbeat options.

1. Create a Check-in

To create a check-in, navigate to the Check-ins page and click "Create check-in".

A key part of this process is to create a unique check-in identifier.

For simplicity and traceability, we recommend using your script's name as the identifier. For example, if you have a script named payment-script that handles your payment process, use payment-script as the identifier.

You can also use a custom identifier. Read more about how to create a check-in in our docs.

2. Configure Wrap to Send Check-Ins

Next, you'll need to configure Wrap to send check-in events to AppSignal. This is easily configured with command line options.

Cron Check-Ins

Use --cron for tasks that run on a schedule. AppSignal sends a "start" check-in when the process begins and a "finish" check-in if it completes successfully. If the process fails, AppSignal will alert you when it doesn't receive a finish check-in:

appsignal-wrap payment-script --cron -- bash /var/app/payment_script.sh

Heartbeat Check-Ins

Use --heartbeat for long-running tasks that you want to track in real-time. AppSignal will send updates as long as the process is running. Heartbeats are ideal for monitoring processes that should always be running, such as critical services like databases or microservices that handle payments and need to always be available. For example:

appsignal-wrap payment-script --heartbeat -- python /var/app/payment_script.py

To summarize: Cron check-ins are triggered at the start and end of a process, while heartbeat check-ins continuously update you throughout the entire runtime of a process.

These simple check-ins keep your processes monitored without additional setup — just plug them in and start tracking.

AppSignal: The Proactive Application Performance Monitoring Tool

At AppSignal, we develop tools to help developers stay ahead of issues before they disrupt your workflow. With Wrap, you can be proactive and ensure your background processes — like cron jobs and scheduled tasks — always run as expected.

Developers love AppSignal's:

Ready to take your monitoring to the next level? Sign up for a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) to ensure your background processes run smoothly. You can also read more about Wrap in our docs.

Need help? Our support team is always on standby to assist.