# Heartbeat monitoring ilert's heartbeat alert sources allow you to monitor services, devices, or workflows easily — depending only on an HTTPS outbound connection. It checks whether your systems or services are still running by expecting regular signals, and you get alerted automatically when those signals stop, indicating a failure or outage. To start monitoring via ilert heartbeat, log into your ilert account, click Alert sources, and find **Heartbeat monitors** in the dropdown menu. Then, click **Create heartbeat monitor**.
ilert Heartbeat monitor creation
Add new monitor to the [team](https://docs.ilert.com/user-administration/teams), name it, and choose an [alert source](https://docs.ilert.com/alerting/alert-sources) that will trigger an alert if the heartbeat ping is overdue. Choose an interval after which the heartbeat will create an alert through the given alert source if it does not receive a response. You can choose between seconds, minutes, and hours. Finally, provide a summary of the alert to help your team quickly identify the issue.
Create a heartbeat monitor in ilert
When ready, click **Create**. You will see the Monitor's details view, where the **integration URL** (API key) will be shown. You can use this key to call ping requests for your heartbeat alert source. The heartbeat timer starts once the first ping is received. The heartbeat monitor will not do its job until it is activated by receiving the first ping.
Heartbeat monitoring in ilert
If you need to update the monitor, click the **pencil** icon. You can also delete your monitor using the same menu by clicking the bin icon. To adjust alerting settings for your newly created Heartbeat monitor, go to **Alert sources**, then, again, **Alert sources,** and choose **Heartbeat** from the list of integrations. You can have many heartbeats pointing to the same alert source and have unified alerting settings for all of them.
create ilert heartbeat monitoring
You can find more examples on how to implement heartbeats here: {% content-ref url="heartbeat-monitoring/prometheus-heartbeat-example" %} [prometheus-heartbeat-example](https://docs.ilert.com/alerting/heartbeat-monitoring/prometheus-heartbeat-example) {% endcontent-ref %} {% content-ref url="heartbeat-monitoring/cli-heartbeat-examples" %} [cli-heartbeat-examples](https://docs.ilert.com/alerting/heartbeat-monitoring/cli-heartbeat-examples) {% endcontent-ref %} --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.ilert.com/alerting/heartbeat-monitoring.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.