Google Cloud Workflows monitoring integration

Monitor your Google Cloud Workflows resources to track execution volumes, identify latency bottlenecks across steps, and ensure your serverless workflow orchestrations run reliably. Google Cloud Workflows monitoring lets you maintain visibility into execution backlogs, callback handling, and step-level performance.

Benefits

Monitoring Workflows ensures that your service remains reliable, secure, and high-performing. Key benefits include:

Identify execution backlogs and callback timeouts before they delay downstream processes.
Track step-level latencies across compute, I/O, and KMS operations to fine-tune workflow design.
Maintain SLA compliance and reduce downtime with automated alerts and IT automation.
Consolidate Workflows metrics with other GCP services for a single pane of glass view.
Ensure smooth monitoring across multiple workflow definitions with bulk configuration and agent upgrades.

Use cases

Here are some use cases where Google Cloud Workflows monitoring will be helpful:

Monitor execution backlog size and started/finished execution counts to detect processing slowdowns in real time.
Capture deployment attempt failures to quickly identify misconfigured workflow revisions.
Visualize step latencies across compute, I/O, and callback operations to plan capacity and optimize scaling.
Set thresholds for execution duration and error counts to ensure contractual obligations are met.
Track KMS encrypt/decrypt request volumes and callback timeout counts to strengthen workflow reliability.
Integrate Workflows monitoring with other GCP services (i.e., Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, or Cloud Run) for holistic visibility.

Setup and configuration

Adding Google Cloud Workflows while configuring a new Google Cloud monitor

If you have not configured a Google Cloud monitor yet, add one by following the steps below:
1. Go to Cloud > GCP > Add GCP Monitor or Admin > Cloud Monitoring > Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
2. Provide a unique display name for identification purposes.
3. Upload the JSON file that contains the private key of the service account to authenticate and perform resource discovery.
4. Select Workflows from the Select the Resources for Monitoring list.
5. Select existing notification profiles, user alert groups, tags, and IT automation templates or add new ones. You can also integrate alarms with your preferred third-party service.
6. Click Start GCP Monitoring.
Adding Google Cloud Workflows to an existing Google Cloud monitor

If you already have a Google Cloud monitor configured for the service account, you can add Google Cloud Workflows by following the steps below:
1. Go to Cloud > GCP and select your GCP monitor.
2. Click the hamburger icon next to Service View and select Edit, which brings you to the Edit GCP Monitor page.
3. On the Edit GCP Monitor page, select Workflows from the Select the Resources for Monitoring list and click Save.
4. After successful configuration, go to Cloud > GCP > Workflows. Now you can view the discovered Google Cloud Workflows resources.

Note

It will take approximately five minutes to discover new GCP resources.

Licensing

Each Google Cloud Workflows monitor consumes one basic monitor license.

Polling frequency

A Google Cloud Workflows monitor collects minute-wise metric data, and the statuses of your Google Workflows resources are reported every five minutes.

Supported metrics

Metric name	Description	Statistic	Unit
Await Callback Step Count	The number of await callback steps executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Callback Requests Count	The number of requests made to callback endpoints created by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Callback Timeout Count	The number of callback steps that timed out while waiting for a callback request.	Total	Count
CMEK Protected Workflow Count	The number of workflows that are protected using a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK).	Total	Count
Compute Slice Count	The number of compute slices consumed while executing workflow steps.	Total	Count
Compute Slice Latencies	The latency distribution of compute slices consumed during workflow step execution.	Average	Milliseconds
Compute Step Count	The number of compute steps executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Compute Step Latencies	The latency distribution of compute steps executed by workflow executions.	Average	Milliseconds
Create Callback Step Count	The number of create callback steps executed, which generate a callback endpoint for a workflow execution.	Total	Count
Deployment Attempt Count	The number of attempts made to deploy a workflow revision.	Total	Count
Deployment Latencies	The latency distribution of workflow deployment operations.	Average	Milliseconds
Duplicate Event Count	The number of duplicate events received by event-driven workflow executions.	Total	Count
Event Time To Ack Latencies	The latency distribution between an event being received and being acknowledged by a workflow execution.	Average	Milliseconds
Event Trigger Count	The number of workflow executions triggered by an event.	Total	Count
Execution Backlog Size	The number of workflow executions that are queued and waiting to start.	Average	Count
Internal Execution Error Count	The number of internal errors encountered during workflow execution.	Total	Count
IO Internal Request Count	The number of internal I/O requests made during workflow execution.	Total	Count
IO Step Count	The number of I/O steps, such as HTTP calls, executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
IO Step Latencies	The latency distribution of I/O steps executed by workflow executions.	Average	Milliseconds
KMS Decrypt Latencies	The latency distribution of Cloud KMS decrypt operations performed by workflow executions.	Average	Milliseconds
KMS Decrypt Request Count	The number of Cloud KMS decrypt requests made by workflow executions.	Total	Count
KMS Encrypt Latencies	The latency distribution of Cloud KMS encrypt operations performed by workflow executions.	Average	Milliseconds
KMS Encrypt Request Count	The number of Cloud KMS encrypt requests made by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Parallel Branch Step Count	The number of parallel branch steps executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Parallel Branch Substep Count	The number of substeps executed within parallel branch steps.	Total	Count
Parallel Iteration Step Count	The number of parallel iteration (parallel for) steps executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Parallel Iteration Substep Count	The number of substeps executed within parallel iteration steps.	Total	Count
Parallel Unhandled Exceptions Limit Count	The number of times a workflow execution reached the limit on unhandled exceptions within a parallel branch or iteration.	Total	Count
Pending IO Requests	The number of I/O requests that are pending completion during workflow execution.	Average	Count
Started VPC-SC Executions Count	The number of workflow executions started within a VPC Service Controls perimeter.	Total	Count
VPC-SC Protected IO Count	The number of I/O steps executed within a VPC Service Controls perimeter.	Total	Count
Execution Times	The duration distribution of completed workflow executions.	Average	Seconds
External Step Count	The number of external steps, such as calls to external services, executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Finished Execution Count	The number of workflow executions that have finished, grouped by their end state.	Total	Count
Internal Step Count	The number of internal steps executed by workflow executions.	Total	Count
Sent Bytes Count	The number of bytes sent by workflow executions during step execution.	Total	Bytes
Started Execution Count	The number of workflow executions that have started.	Total	Count

Threshold configuration

Global configuration
1. In the web client, go to the Admin section on the left navigation pane.
2. Select Configuration Profiles from the left pane and select Threshold and Availability from the drop-down menu.
3. Click Add Threshold Profile in the top-right corner.
4. For Monitor Type, select Workflows.
5. Specify the threshold values for the required metrics, then click Save.
Monitor-level configuration
1. In the web client, go to Cloud > GCP > Workflows.
2. Select a resource you would like to set a threshold for, then click the hamburger icon.
3. Select Edit, which directs you to the Edit Workflows Monitor page.
4. Specify the threshold values for the required metrics, then click Save.

IT automation

IT automation tools automatically resolve performance degradation issues. These tools react to events proactively rather than waiting for manual intervention. IT automation tools automate repetitive tasks and automatically remediate threshold breaches. The alarm engine continually evaluates system events for which thresholds are set and executes the mapped automation when there is a breach.

How to configure IT automation for a monitor

Configuration rules

Editing multiple monitors to associate different monitor groups or add a different tag can be a tedious process. With configuration rules, you can automate the configuration settings of your monitoring resources. Create custom rules to track configuration changes continuously and achieve the ideal configuration settings.

How to add configuration rules

Summary

The Summary tab will give you the performance data organized by time for the metrics listed above. To view the summary:

Go to Cloud > GCP > Workflows.
Select a resource.
Click the Summary tab.

Configuration Details

The Configuration Details tab provides details on the configurations of application instances. To get the configuration details:

Go to Cloud > GCP > Workflows.
Select a resource.
Click the Configuration Details tab.

Reports

Gain in-depth data about the various parameters of your monitored resources and accentuate your service performance using our insightful reports.

To view reports for a Google Workflows resource:

Go to the Reports section on the left navigation pane.
Select Workflows from the menu on the left.
You can find the Availability Summary Report, Performance Report, and Inventory Report for one selected monitor. Or, you can get the Summary Report, Availability Summary Report, Health Trend Report, and Performance Report for all Google Workflows monitors.

You can also get reports from the Summary tab of the Google Workflows monitor:

Click the Summary tab.
Get the Availability Summary Report of the monitor by clicking Availability.
You can also find the Performance Report of the monitor by clicking any chart title.