Observability on Board

Episode 14traces

n8n can trace every workflow

n8n can send workflow and node spans to any OpenTelemetry backend. One settings page turns it on.

Ship telemetry toUse an OTLP endpoint you already have, from another vendor or your platform team. This one needs a one-time setup step: save your endpoint and the episodes fill it in.Set your endpointRun an OpenTelemetry Collector on your machine and watch telemetry arrive in its terminal. No account needed.More detailsShip straight to Bronto. You need an account and an API key with ingest permission.More details

Switch it on

n8n’s observability is configured in its settings.

  1. Open Settings and click OpenTelemetry in the sidebar.
  2. Click Enable.
  3. Fill in OTLP endpoint with the value below.
  4. Under Custom headers, click Add header and fill in Key and Value.
  5. Click Save settings.

OTLP endpoint:

https://ingestion.eu.bronto.io

Key:

x-bronto-api-key

Value:

$BRONTO_API_KEY

OTLP endpoint:

http://localhost:4318

Skip the custom header. The Local Collector setup shows the Collector side.

This uses the endpoint and auth header you saved in the setup guide.

OTLP endpoint:

YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT

Key:

YOUR_AUTH_HEADER

Value:

YOUR_AUTH_VALUE