Observability over Temporal.io workflows and activities

Below are a few examples of how to leverage E2E observability in Helios when using Temporal.io as part of your distributed application.

Configuration

Node.js

To apply the automatic instrumentation, add the @heliosphere/opentelemetry-instrumentation-temporal NPM package to the relevant service (Temporal client / workflow / worker), and enable it as follows:

const { initialize } = require('helios-opentelemetry-sdk')
const { TemporalInstrumentation } = require('@heliosphere/opentelemetry-instrumentation-temporal')
const provider = initialize({ ... });
const instrumentation = new TemporalInstrumentation();
instrumentation.setTracerProvider(provider);

Once enabled, all the activity invocations of each workflow appear under the same trace, along with all the operations performed by them (e.g. HTTP calls, DB queries, etc.) and their payload.

Temporal.io instrumentation is supported for Node.js services.

Distributed tracing & visualization

A Temporal workflow and activity will be shown as 'RunWorkflow' and 'RunActivity' respectively in a specific service along with it's name. For example, the following service has 1 workflow with 2 Temporal activities.

The visualization groups together the workflows and activities which are originated from the same service, so it will be clear what belongs to a single service.

Observability & monitoring

To keep track on your Temporal, you can use the search bar to search for specific workflows and activities and set an alert combining this filter with any other one.

Using these filters, labels can be configured and allow you quick access and observability to you most important activities and workflows. Also alerts and notifications can be configured on the label.
Combining these filters with filters such as With operation errors won't let you miss errors on your crucial endpoints again.

Please refer Labels, alerts & notifications to see how to fully use Helios's observability features.

🖤

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