A system and method for synthesizing custom metric attributes from available attributes. The system includes an application server that exposes available metric attributes of a MBean. A network console displays for selection the metric attributes of the MBean on a navigation tree and a view panel is located on the network management console where the metric attributes are dragged. The console and view panel allow network administrators to review monitoring data collected exposed by the application server. Custom attributes are created by combining attributes made available by the application server and can be combined to synthesize a custom expression that can be made available to other managed servers on the application server.