#  Usage Telemetry

The platform shares anonymous usage information with us at FlowFuse. This helps us understand how the platform is being used, what areas need improvement and how we should prioritise future work.

Ultimately, it helps us produce a better platform for all its users.

We do not collect:

  • Any personally identifiable information. We do store a secure hash of the sending IP address - but the plain value is never stored
  • Any specific details of the flows running on the platform.

#  Core Telemetry

#  Configuring Telemetry

By default, usage telemetry is enabled on the platform. The administrator can opt-out of sharing information as part of the initial setup, or through the Admin Settings section of the platform UI.

It is also possible to disable in the flowforge.yml configuration file. This overrides whatever option is set in the Admin Settings UI.

IMPORTANT: Licensed installations cannot disable telemetry

telemetry:
  enabled: false

#  Collected Data

The following pieces of information are included in the telemetry sent back to us:

{
  "instanceId": "5db51f99-c6fb-4340-9c19-78adce58cc1b",
  "os": { "type": "Darwin", "release": "20.5.0", "arch": "x64" },
  "env": { "nodejs": "v16.19.1", "flowforge": "1.0.0" },
  "platform": {
    "counts": {
      "users": 6,
      "teams": 5,
      "projects": 4,
      "devices": 9,
      "projectSnapshots": 16,
      "projectTemplates": 7,
      "projectStacks": 2,
      "libraryEntries": 0,
      "sharedLibraryEntries": 2
    },
    "config": {
      "driver": "localfs",
      "broker": {
        "enabled": true
      },
      "fileStore": {
        "enabled": true
      },
      "email": {
        "enabled": false
      }
    },
    "license": {
      "id": "4c105579-782b-4d53-af62-cf7fa69f6b43",
      "type": "DEV"
    }
  }
}
Property Description
instanceId A unique identifier for the FlowFuse instance.
os Information about the operating system
env Node.js and FlowFuse versions
platform.counts A snapshot of the number of users, teams, projects (instances), etc, in use on the platform.
platform.config.driver Which backend driver is being used
platform.config.broker.enabled A flag indicating whether the the internal comms broker is enabled
platform.config.fileStore.enabled A flag indicating whether the file store is enabled
platform.config.email.enabled A flag indicating whether email is enabled
platform.license.id The ID of the license loaded
platform.license.type The type of the license

When the data is collected, we also store the timestamp the data was received and a hash of the sending IP address - we do not store the plain value.

#  Schedule

For the core tracking, the platform will send the telemetry data:

  • 30 seconds after the platform starts up (but only if the platform has already been initialised)
  • Once every 24 hours at a time randomly picked when the platform starts

The data is sent via an HTTP Post to https://ping.flowforge.com.

#  Frontend Telemetry

The FlowFuse UI can be configured to track usage to help understand how users are navigating the pages.

It supports integration with two different services:

  • PostHog (recommended): You will require your own API key to pass into the yml, which will begin the logging of user interactions.
  • Sentry (recommended): You will need to specify your Sentry DSN for the frontend and back-end
  • Plausible: (deprecated since 0.9 and will be removed in the future): You can setup your own account, and pass the relevant domain to the yml in the telemetry configuration. As this option is deprecated, details of how to configure are no longer provided.

#  Configuring Telemetry

Option Description
telemetry.enabled Enables the anonymous usage telemetry of the platform. Default: true
telemetry.backend.sentry.dsn The API key provided to you from your own sentry account. Default: null
telemetry.frontend.posthog.apikey The API key provided to you from your own PostHog account. Default: null
telemetry.frontend.posthog.capture_pageview FlowFuse is designed as to provide custom posthog $pageview events that provide more detail on navigation than the default, and suit a single page application better. As such, we recommend setting this to false in order to prevent duplicate pageleave/pageview events firing. Default: true
telemetry.frontend.sentry.dsn The API key provided to you from your own sentry account. Default: null
telemetry.frontend.sentry.production_mode Should this instance be treated as production (lower session count recorded). Default: false 
telemetry:
  enabled: true
  frontend:
    posthog:
      apikey: <api-key>
      capture_pageview: false
    sentry:
      dsn: <dsn-key>
      production_mode: true
  backend:
    sentry:
      dsn: <dsn-key>
    prometheus:
      enabled: true

Sentry reads the environment variable SENTRY_ENV, falling back to NODE_ENV to set the environment for both frontend and backend.

#  Telemetry During Build

Configure .env with the auth token, org, and project name for the frontend project.

# Used for BUILD time sentry reporting
SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN=
SENTRY_ORG=
SENTRY_PROJECT=