---
title: "Monitor View: A window into Datadog’s monitoring engine"
description: "Monitor view lets you see your data through Datadog’s eyes, making it easier than ever to identify the exact moment an alert will trigger."
author: "Evan Mouzakitis"
date: 2016-02-04
tags: ["alerts"]
blog_type_id: the-monitor
locale: en
---

Chances are you've created an alert that didn't fire exactly when you expected it to, even though it is working exactly right. Often an alert is configured to trigger when a moving average exceeds a certain threshold—for example, when the number of 5xxs averaged over the last hour exceeds two per minute—and often you may not have a view that shows the moving average.

Enter *Monitor View*, a new feature for [monitors](https://docs.datadoghq.com/monitors.md) that graphs your data exactly as it is processed by our alerting backends.

## Seeing when alerts will trigger

Let's take a look at a concrete example. Here, we've set up a monitor to alert on `haproxy.backend.queue.time`, should it exceed an average value of **.01 ms** over the last hour. Here's what our **real-time** data looks like, averaged over the group of HAproxy machines. Can you spot when it will trigger?

![Monitor View—Can you spot the trigger?](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1776357725-monitor-view-a-window-into-datadogs-monitoring-engine-can-you-spot-the-trigger.png)
*Can you spot when it will trigger?*

In the above screenshot, you can see the data points stream in, in real-time. For most people, computing a trailing average over the past hour for these data points is not intuitive. In this case, it is exceedingly difficult to gauge the exact moment the value (*averaged over the past hour*) exceeded .01.

The next screenshot shows the same data, this time from the Monitor View perspective:

![Monitor View—Can you spot the trigger NOW?](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1776357729-monitor-view-a-window-into-datadogs-monitoring-engine-can-you-spot-the-trigger-now1.png)
*Moving average data, moving average alert threshold*

Now it is clear that the value of the `haproxy.backend.queue.time` metric, averaged over an hour, exceeded the .01 threshold value only one time: at 12:20 on January 12th.

## Try it today

New to Monitors? Check out our [guide](https://docs.datadoghq.com/monitors.md) which walks through setting up a monitor for your infrastructure.

Datadog customers can access the new feature by navigating to the [Monitors](https://app.datadoghq.com/monitors) page and clicking on an existing **Metric Monitor**. In the monitor editing page, change your view from *Original Data* to *Monitor View*.

![Monitor View Highlighted](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1776357734-monitor-view-a-window-into-datadogs-monitoring-engine-monitor-view-button-highlight1.png)

If you don't have a Datadog account, you can try it out today by signing up for a [free trial](https://www.datadoghq.com/signup/).