Documentation Grafana Cloud Testing and synthetics Synthetic Monitoring Create checks Organize checks in folders

Organize checks in folders

As you create more checks or onboard new teams, a single flat list becomes hard to scan. You can organize your Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring checks into Grafana folders to group them by team, service, or environment. This makes the right checks easy to find and lets you act on an entire group at once rather than one check at a time.

Using folders, you can:

• Assign a check to a folder when you create or edit it.
• Browse your checks grouped by folder in the check list.
• Move one or more checks between folders at any time.
• Perform bulk operations at the folder level, such as enabling, disabling, moving, or deleting all checks in a folder.
• Control who can view and edit checks in the Synthetics app through Grafana folder permissions.

How it works

Every check belongs to a folder. When you create a check without selecting a folder, it’s stored in the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder.

Synthetic Monitoring uses standard Grafana folders, organized as a tree under the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder: any folder you create from the Synthetics app is created inside it, either directly or nested under one of its subfolders. As with folders elsewhere in Grafana, you can nest folders up to four levels deep.

Before you begin

To organize checks in folders, you need:

• A Grafana Cloud account with Synthetic Monitoring set up.
• Permission to edit checks in Synthetic Monitoring.
• To assign a check to a folder, Edit permission on that folder.
• To create new folders, Edit permission on the parent folder where you want to create them (for example, the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder).

Assign a folder when creating a check

1. On the main menu, select Testing & synthetics and then Synthetics.

2. Click Create new check or Add new check.

3. Select your check type and configure its options.

4. In the Folder field, select the folder where you want to store the check.

   To create a new folder, click Create folder, enter a name, and optionally select a parent folder. New folders are created under the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder, or under the subfolder you select as parent.

5. Click Save.

If you don’t select a folder, the check is saved in the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder.

Change the folder of an existing check

1. On the main menu, select Testing & synthetics and then Synthetics.
2. Click Checks.
3. Open the check you want to move and click Edit.
4. In the Folder field, select a different folder.
5. Click Save.

You can also move a check directly from the check list using the Move to folder action on the check, without opening the editor.

Move multiple checks at once

To move several checks to the same folder:

1. On the main menu, select Testing & synthetics and then Synthetics.
2. Click Checks.
3. Select the checks you want to move using the checkboxes.
4. Click Move to folder and select the destination folder.

All selected checks are moved in a single operation. To perform a bulk move, you need Edit permission on the folder of every selected check, as well as on the destination folder.

Browse checks by folder

The check list offers a folder view in addition to the card and list views:

1. On the main menu, select Testing & synthetics and then Synthetics.
2. Click Checks.
3. Use the view switcher to select the Folder view.

Checks are grouped under their folders, so you can expand only the folders you care about instead of scanning a flat list.

Manage checks at the folder level

In the folder view, you can act on all the checks in a folder at once. From a folder’s actions you can:

• Enable or disable all checks in the folder.
• Move all checks in the folder to another folder.
• Delete all checks in the folder. If you also have permission to delete the folder itself, the folder is deleted along with its checks.

Manage check access with folder permissions

You can manage access to checks using folder-level permissions.

Access to checks in a folder is determined by two layers, following the same model as other Grafana resources:

• Synthetic Monitoring role: grants the ability to perform actions in the app, such as reading or writing checks (for example, the Checks reader and Checks writer roles).
• Folder permissions: define which folders those actions can be applied to.

For example:

• A user with folder Edit permission and the Checks writer role can create, edit, move, and delete checks in that folder.
• A user with folder View permission and the Checks writer role can only view the checks in that folder.
• A user with folder Edit permission and the Checks reader role can only view checks, regardless of folder permission.
• A user with no permission on a folder can’t see the checks in that folder in the Synthetics app.

This follows the same behavior as Grafana folders elsewhere: folder Edit permission allows managing and deleting the resources in the folder, just as it does for dashboards.

To allow a user to manage the checks in a specific folder:

1. As a Grafana organization administrator, ensure the user has the Checks writer role in Administration > Users. This role is included by default in the Editor and Admin basic roles, so users with those roles don’t need it assigned separately.
2. On the main menu, select Dashboards and navigate to the folder.
3. Click Folder actions and select Manage permissions.
4. Click Add a permission and grant the user folder Edit permission.

For more information, refer to Folder access control.

Deleted folders

If a folder containing checks is deleted from Grafana, the checks are automatically moved to the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder and continue to run without interruption.

Provisioning

• API: checks accept a folderUid field on create and update. The folder must be the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder or one of its subfolders. Assigning checks to folders outside this tree isn’t supported.
• Terraform: the grafana_synthetic_monitoring_check resource accepts a folder_uid attribute to associate the check with a Grafana folder (requires Grafana Terraform provider v4.37.0 or later). The same constraint applies: the folder must be within the default Grafana Synthetic Monitoring folder tree. Checks created without a folder_uid are stored in the default folder.