Proactive Business Process Monitoring

Monitor end-to-end service health across all dependencies. Get real-time visibility into process health and performance metrics

How Do You Monitor a Business Process and Not Just Its Individual Components?

Monitoring business processes means more than checking if a server is up. It means knowing whether the services your operations depend on are actually functioning, end to end, across every component, protocol, and location they rely on. A single component going green tells you nothing about whether the service itself is healthy.

Paessler PRTG combines sensors from across your infrastructure into a single aggregated service-level monitor, up to 50 channels per Business Process sensor. Instead of tracking server health, network status, and application availability separately, you define a service. Whether its remote access, a web application, or an ERP system, and PRTG watches every component it relies on. One combined status in real time. When something degrades, you see exactly which part is affected.

PRTG monitors services built on: web servers, VPN gateways, RDP/RDS environments, Active Directory, SQL databases, cloud endpoints (HTTP/HTTPS), SNMP-enabled network devices, WMI-monitored Windows systems, and external HTTP/HTTPS endpoints.

Supported protocols and methods: SNMP, WMI, HTTP/HTTPS, ICMP ping, RDP, REST API.

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What you will find on this page

Full Business Process Visibility
How PRTG Monitors Business Processes
Business Process Monitoring: Manual Effort vs. PRTG
FAQs

PRTG is compatible with all major vendors, products, and systems

Full Business Process Visibility, From a Single View

Catch Service Degradation Before Your Users Do

Individual components show green, but the service is not responding. By the time a ticket arrives, the disruption has already started, and your business operations are paying for it.

PRTG gives you service-level visibility. Define which components make up a service, set warning and error thresholds that reflect your operational KPIs (key performance indicators), and PRTG continuously monitors combined process health. When any part degrades past your threshold, an alert fires, enabling corrective action before the impact reaches your users. Before customer satisfaction takes the hit.

Service-level alerting that reflects the combined health of all monitored dependencies
Configurable warning and error thresholds per service component: set them to reflect your KPIs
Real-time status across mixed environments: on-premises, cloud, and hybrid
Alerts trigger on service degradation, not just complete failure
No scripting required for standard service monitor setup

Track Every Service Across All Its Dependencies, In One Place

Modern services span many components. When one falls silent, you're cross-referencing dashboards to identify bottlenecks and possible causes, while users are already affected and process efficiency drops.

PRTG pulls everything into one structured service view. Sensors from different devices, protocols, and locations feed into a single model. External HTTP/HTTPS endpoints, a third-party API, a payment provider, are included too. You define the service once. PRTG watches the full chain, giving you the performance data you need to streamline troubleshooting across every dependency. That data supports data-driven decision making about where inefficiencies actually sit.

Cross-device, cross-protocol service models using SNMP, WMI, HTTP, ping, RDP, and more
External endpoint availability (HTTP/HTTPS) included in the same service view
Optimize operational efficiency by correlating data from all service components in one view
Service model defined by you, reflecting your actual process flows and infrastructure dependencies
No separate monitoring tool needed per technology layer

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PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Give Every Stakeholder the View They Actually Need

Engineers need sensor-level detail. Managers need process health at a glance. A single shared dashboard serves neither, and manual reporting produces performance data that's outdated before it's read.

PRTG's map editor lets you build role-specific dashboards from the same live monitoring data. Engineers get full sensor detail and performance metrics. Managers get color-coded service health, visualization that supports informed decisions, risk management, and operational excellence across business goals. No duplication. No manual updates.

Map editor for building role-specific views and real-time service visualization
Color-coded service health maps: green, yellow, red at a glance
Shareable maps accessible to stakeholders via read-only user accounts
One monitoring setup, multiple audience-appropriate views aligned to your business goals
No manual reporting or status update preparation required

Branch and Regional Teams: Get Local Service Visibility Without Reconfiguring Central IT

Branch teams often find out about problems the same way end users do: when something stops working. Delayed detection, inefficiencies in troubleshooting, resource utilization stretched thin across sites that aren't properly monitored.

PRTG's remote probes runs local network scanning on-site. Monitoring traffic stays within the local network. The probe connects to the PRTG core server, on-premises or via PRTG Hosted Monitor, for centralized management, data storage, and alerting. Deploying a remote probe per site costs less than running a separate monitoring tool for each location, and everything is managed from the same central PRTG core. That's where the cost savings come from: consolidation, not complexity.

Remote probe performs local network scanning on-site, monitoring traffic stays local
Requires a PRTG core server (on-premises or PRTG Hosted Monitor) for centralized management
Fast to deploy at a branch or regional site without a company-wide rollout
Supports distributed, multi-site environments from a single PRTG core
Central IT doesn't need to reconfigure their existing setup to add a new site

How PRTG Monitors Business Processes

PRTG uses a sensor-based approach to data collection. Individual sensors gather performance data from devices, services, and endpoints, the core functions your business relies on. The Business Process sensor and Sensor Factory sensor aggregate that data into service-level views, with multiple channels per service reflecting the health of each component group.

Business Process Sensor

Select source sensors from anywhere in your PRTG setup and group them into channels. For each channel, define warning and error thresholds based on the percentage of source sensors in a degraded state. This sets your tolerance for error rates across each component group.

PRTG maps each source sensor to a business process condition. "Up," "Warning," and "Down (Partial)" map to "up." A "Down" status maps to "down." The Global State channel always reflects the most severe status present. The sensor supports up to 50 channels, granular process performance visibility for complex service models, no additional tooling needed.

Sensor Factory Sensor

The Sensor Factory sensor applies formula-based logic instead of percentage thresholds. Write channel expressions using sensor IDs and define exactly which condition changes the sensor's status.

Example: alert only if two or more of four specific components are simultaneously down. This keeps alert noise low and business outcomes in focus. Single-component failures don't automatically mark the entire service unavailable. Start with the Business Process sensor for most use cases, use Sensor Factory when you need more precise control.

Service Sensor Types

For web services: the HTTP Full Web Page sensor measures full page load time including all assets, a direct timing and throughput metric for web service performance. The HTTP Transaction sensor monitors multi-step flows like logins and checkout processes. The Cloud Ping v2 sensor checks availability from locations across four continents.

For remote access: the RDP sensor tracks protocol availability and response time. For infrastructure: the SNMP Hardware Status sensor covers server hardware health. The SNMP Cisco ASA VPN Connections sensor tracks VPN availability and connection counts. All feed directly into Business Process or Sensor Factory sensors, the foundation for your service-level performance metrics.

Alerts and Notifications

When a Business Process sensor changes state, PRTG triggers the notification workflows you've configured, without manual intervention and no automation gap between detection and response. Email and push notifications via the iOS and Android app work out of the box. HTTP actions (webhooks) and REST API calls route alerts into external systems. Notification schedules control timing and recipients. Escalation rules engage additional contacts if an alert isn't acknowledged within a defined window. Alert acknowledgment stops repeat notifications while the issue is being worked. SMS is supported but requires a third-party SMS gateway.

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Business Process Monitoring: Manual Effort vs. PRTG

Task	Without PRTG Without PRTG	With PRTG With PRTG
Service health visibility	Without PRTG Check each component separately to assess overall service health	With PRTG Single service-level sensor shows aggregated status across all monitored dependencies in real time
Issue detection	Without PRTG Users report the problem before IT knows it exists	With PRTG Threshold-based alerting fires when a service condition degrades, enabling corrective action before full failure
Status reporting	Without PRTG Manual status updates prepared for management	With PRTG Shareable dashboards update automatically with live monitoring data
Cause Analysis	Without PRTG Cause investigation requires cross-referencing multiple tools. A slow and inefficient task	With PRTG See which service component group is degraded and navigate directly to the relevant sensors in PRTG
Remote/branch site monitoring	Without PRTG No monitoring at remote/branch sites without a company-wide rollout	With PRTG Streamline monitoring across distributed sites with a remote probe: fast to deploy, no central IT reconfiguration

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”Adopting PRTG has been like going from being in the dark to being in the light. Before, we had limited visibility into what was happening in the infrastructure and in the network. Now, however, thanks to the comprehensive dashboard and real-time notifications, we receive constant updates on the status of facilities and services, and our way of working has gone from passive to proactive.”

Luca Meneghesso, Senior IT infrastructure and Security Specialist

Banca Profilo

”GESAC increasingly focuses on innovation to improve the quality of services offered and the experience of passengers handled every day by Naples Airport. Thanks to PRTG, we finally have unified, automatic, and continuous monitoring of the airport network and can guarantee quick and timely interventions.”

Domenico Ciervo, GESAC ICT Manager

Naples International Airport

”As an international company, PRTG is ideal for us. If something went down half way across the world, we wouldn’t be woken up – we can rely on PRTG to identify the problem and alert us before it occurs – enabling the right person, in the right time zone to resolve the problem. At the end of the day, if we’re to provide an internal network experience for our employees that meets expectations, we need a tool like PRTG to be successful.”

Barry Kelly, Systems Engineer

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Paessler PRTG Network Monitor licenses & pricing

Choose the PRTG Network Monitor subscription that's best for you.

License Name	Price	License Details	Get started	Pricing Details
PRTG 500	^$200	per month paid annually	Buy now Buy now	Enough to monitor multiple aspects of 50 devices
PRTG 1000	^$358	per month paid annually	Buy now Buy now	Enough to monitor multiple aspects of 100 devices
PRTG 2500	^$742	per month paid annually	Buy now Buy now	Enough to monitor multiple aspects of 250 devices
PRTG 5000	^$1,300	per month paid annually	Buy now Buy now	Enough to monitor multiple aspects of 500 devices
PRTG 10000	^$1,642	per month paid annually	Buy now Buy now	Enough to monitor multiple aspects of 1000 devices

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Business Process Monitoring with PRTG: Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Business Process sensor in PRTG and how does it work?

The Business Process sensor creates a single sensor reflecting the combined process health of multiple components. Select source sensors, group them into channels, and set warning and error thresholds based on what percentage of source sensors are degraded. PRTG maps each sensor's status to a business process condition, up or down. The Global State channel always shows the most severe status across all channels. One sensor. Clear service health. Full component detail underneath.

What happens when one component of a monitored service fails?

PRTG evaluates the affected channel against your defined thresholds. If the percentage of sensors in a down condition exceeds your error threshold, the channel’s state changes to down, which propagates to the Global State channel. Your configured notifications fire immediately. Individual source sensors remain accessible, so you can navigate directly to the failing component, investigate, and take corrective action from there.

Can I monitor cloud-hosted and on-premises components in the same service monitor?

Yes. The Business Process sensor pulls from existing source sensors regardless of where the underlying component is hosted. An on-premises VPN server, a cloud-hosted endpoint monitored via HTTP, and a local database can all be part of the same service model. This works whether you're running a stable on-premises environment or hybrid infrastructure during a digital transformation period. The sensor works with whatever the source sensors are measuring.

What's the difference between the Business Process sensor and the Sensor Factory sensor?

Both aggregate performance data from source sensors into a combined service view. The Business Process sensor uses percentage-based thresholds: define what share of source sensors in a channel must be down to trigger a warning or error. The Sensor Factory sensor uses formulas: write a channel expression using sensor IDs and define the exact condition that changes the sensor's status.

Start with the Business Process sensor for straightforward service aggregation. Use the Sensor Factory sensor when you need conditional logic, for example, "alert only if two specific high-priority components are both down simultaneously."

Does PRTG integrate with ticketing or ITSM tools for automated incident creation?

Not natively. PRTG doesn't have built-in integrations with specific ITSM platforms. When an alert fires, PRTG can trigger an HTTP action, a webhook call to an external URL. Most ITSM tools accept incoming webhooks and can create incidents automatically from them. Setup requires configuring a webhook receiver on the ITSM side and an HTTP notification action in PRTG with the correct endpoint and payload. It works reliably, but requires configuration on both ends.

How long does it take to set up business process monitoring in PRTG?

If sensors are already running for the components you want to group, typical for existing PRTG users, setting up a Business Process sensor takes minutes. PRTG also includes device templates for common infrastructure components, which speeds up the initial data collection setup if you're starting from scratch. Select source sensors, define channels, set thresholds. Done.

The planning takes longer: deciding which components belong to which service, what thresholds make sense, and how alerting should behave. More complex Sensor Factory configurations take longer than a straightforward Business Process sensor setup. Either way, the performance data from day one supports process improvement decisions, in how you define service models and how quickly you respond when they surface an issue. This is a good way to implement continuous improvement.