How CommonLit Runs Monitoring With 100% Accuracy and No False Positives

CommonLit offers an extensive literacy program that includes numerous reading lessons, a complete annual ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and data based on educational standards for teachers.

CommonLit was facing significant challenges with its web testing protocols. As a lean operation with no dedicated Quality Assurance (QA) team, they encountered occasional undetected errors, impacting their service delivery to hundreds of thousands of users. That’s when they came across Checkly and chose it as a default monitoring solution. 

Find out how CommonLit transformed its monitoring operations, became more efficient, and reduced its monitoring bill by integrating Checkly, the leading code-first synthetic monitoring platform into its software development lifecycle. 

5+

Deployments per day

0

False positives

11

Engineers using Checkly

THE PROBLEM

Manual Processes That Led to Issues

Before adopting Checkly, CommonLit’s engineering team relied on manual processes and a Cypress-based testing system. This setup led to two major issues:

  • Error detection delays: Errors often went unnoticed until reported by users, which was not only inefficient but also detrimental to user experience and trust.
  • Resource-intensive processes: Their existing setup with legacy monitoring tools required significant resources and maintenance, leading to higher operational costs and effort.
  • Accessibility limitations: As an organization that values inclusivity and diversity, CommonLit found its legacy tools lacking in support for accessible testing methods, which was crucial for ensuring the platform's usability for all students and teachers.

Finding the Right Tool to Support Frequent Deployments

CommonLit's decision to transition to Checkly was influenced by several key factors:

  • Frequent updates and deployments: With deployments occurring multiple times daily, CommonLit required a more dependable and automatic testing system to ensure seamless updates without disrupting educational activities.
  • Commitment to accessibility: CommonLit values inclusivity and diversity, requiring a tool that supports testing with accessible selectors. 
  • Operational efficiency: Checkly offered significant improvements in monitoring speed and reliability, reducing the time and effort required for setting up and maintaining monitors.
  • Cost efficiency: The affordability of Checkly, especially with a nonprofit discount, made it an attractive option. This was particularly beneficial given CommonLit's model where most services to teachers are offered for free.
THE SOLUTION

Improved Monitoring Reliability With Checkly 

Transitioning to Checkly at CommonLit focused heavily on enhancing the monitoring capabilities to ensure the reliability and uptime of their educational platform. The process was strategically executed to optimize system observability and minimize disruptions during frequent updates and deployments.

The migration to Checkly was led by a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) who orchestrated the integration of Checkly’s monitoring tools into CommonLit's operational infrastructure in just a few days. The initial task involved a comprehensive review and mapping of existing monitoring procedures to adapt them to Checkly’s advanced capabilities. The integration process also included setting up endpoint checks to monitor critical public pages and user flows such as login processes and lesson interactions.

Embedding Checkly Into the CI/CD Pipeline 

Checkly’s ability to run monitors from multiple data centers and adjust failure thresholds allowed CommonLit to significantly enhance the granularity and responsiveness of their monitoring. This capability proved essential for maintaining a robust service delivery, especially considering CommonLit’s frequent deployment schedule.

With Checkly, CommonLit set up a regime of continuous monitoring that automatically verifies the operational status of their services post-deployment. 

Contrary to other monitoring vendors that are typically used post deployment, CommonLit has embedded Checkly in their development practice, running checks while building the software. They run the checks in the CI pipeline and then deploy them to start observing in production. This system uses Checkly’s alerts to notify the team of any issues in real-time, significantly reducing the time to detection and resolution of issues.

“We deploy five to ten times a day. We want to get all our improvements out in the world, and so having this kind of reliability monitoring that we've gotten out of Checkly has been a big part of how we've enabled this “deploy with confidence” strategy.”

Geoff Harcourt

CTO of CommonLit

THE IMPACT

Boosting the Entire Software Development Lifecycle With Checkly

The enhanced monitoring capabilities Checkly brought have not only boosted the reliability and efficiency of CommonLit's platform but also strengthened its educational offerings. Here's a deeper look into the key benefits that CommonLit saw once they fully adopted Checkly:

  • Improved system reliability and uptime. With continuous monitoring and real-time alerts, CommonLit can proactively address potential disruptions before they affect users. This ensures that educators and students experience minimal interruptions, which is critical for maintaining trust and satisfaction with the platform.
  • Enhanced error detection and response time. Checkly’s comprehensive monitoring tools have enabled CommonLit to detect and respond to issues more quickly and effectively than ever before. The platform’s ability to perform checks from multiple data centers allows for broader coverage and faster identification of regional issues, reducing the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to resolve (MTTR) issues. 
  • Cost efficiency. By optimizing test execution and reducing the need for extensive manual intervention, Checkly has allowed CommonLit to allocate resources more efficiently. Additionally, the nonprofit discount provided by Checkly has made this solution both economically viable and sustainable in the long term. 

“We've gone through periods where our alerting has been noisy. And when alerting gets noisy, people just stop paying attention to it. Right now, our Checkly dashboard is all green and we’ve got 100% success on all of our monitors during the last seven days.”

Geoff Harcourt

CTO of CommonLit

THE IMPACT

Increased Coverage and a Reliable Deployment Process

Additional benefits of using Checkly include: 

  • Increased monitoring coverage. With Checkly, CommonLit has expanded its monitoring coverage across different user interactions and system functionalities. This extensive coverage is crucial for ensuring that every aspect of the platform functions correctly and meets the expected standards of performance, accessibility, and diversity. 
  • Streamlined workflows and reduced maintenance. Checkly makes the process of deploying updates and new features smoother and more reliable. The reduction in test and monitoring suite maintenance has freed up the engineering team’s time, allowing them to focus on developing new features and improving existing ones, rather than constantly fixing issues.  
  • Integration with incident management tools. Finally, Checkly's seamless integration with incident management tools like OpsGenie and Incident.io’s on-call solution enhances CommonLit's ability to manage and respond to incidents efficiently. This integration ensures that alerts are managed effectively, maintaining high service levels and ensuring that the team can quickly address any operational issues.

Thanks to strategic planning and the use of advanced tools like Checkly, CommonLit ensures that its educational platform remains a reliable and effective resource for teachers and students around the world. This approach not only supports their educational goals but also sets a standard for operational excellence in nonprofit digital services.

“We're the most enthusiastic users. We are very, very happy with how well Checkly works and I think the evolution of the product over the last six months is super encouraging. It really seems like the product is on a very positive trajectory.”

Geoff Harcourt

CTO of CommonLit

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