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Overview

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source, vendor-neutral standard for generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data. Backed by the CNCF, it’s the industry norm for instrumenting distributed systems.

It unifies three core signal types:

  • Traces – End-to-end workflows across services
  • Logs – Structured, timestamped events
  • Metrics – Numeric signals representing system health

To learn more, visit opentelemetry.io.

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Why PlayerZero Supports OTel

PlayerZero integrates with OTel to correlate backend telemetry with real user sessions in the frontend. By supporting the native OTLP format, we enable you to:

  • Use existing OTel exporters or collectors
  • Ingest logs, traces, and metrics in real time
  • Enrich these signals with user identity and session context
  • Connect issues to the commit, release, or function that caused them

You choose how to instrument your code; PlayerZero adds user and code insights to each signal.

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What You Can Send

Anything in the OTel (OTLP) format:

  • Traces (Spans) – Distributed workflows across services
  • Logs – Structured log data
  • Metrics – Health or performance indicators

PlayerZero automatically merges these signals into issues, timelines, and regression analysis.

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Logs, Traces, and Metrics in PlayerZero

While traditional observability platforms excel at dashboards and alerts, PlayerZero focuses on end-to-end issue resolution. We bridge your backend data with user sessions and code commits to surface what truly impacts customers.

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Our Approach

We correlate telemetry with:

  • User session timelines
  • Frontend events and actions
  • Commit and release data
  • Known or repeating issues

This unified view helps identify root causes without toggling between multiple tools.

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Frontend-to-Backend Trace Linking

The PlayerZero Web SDK attaches a traceparent header to user actions. This:

  • Links frontend events to backend spans
  • Shows end-to-end timelines spanning UI and system layers
  • Maps traces to specific users, pages, and releases

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Trace Support

  • Accept all OTLP-compliant spans
  • Detect root spans, measure latency, track multi-service requests
  • Highlight repeat issues and performance spikes

Traces appear inside PlayerZero’s issue view and tie directly to user sessions.

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Log Support

  • Ingest structured OTLP logs
  • Associate them automatically to traces via trace_id or user/session context
  • Group recurring log entries to identify patterns or regressions

Logs give deeper context alongside traces and user actions in one place.

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Metric Support

  • Accept OTLP metrics (e.g., CPU usage, error rate, latency)
  • Surface spikes and anomalies that align with real user impact
  • No standalone dashboard: metrics are used to enrich issue timelines and triage

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Example Workflow

  1. User Action: A user clicks a button in the browser (Web SDK adds traceparent).
  2. Backend Spans/Logs: The server emits spans and logs via OTel.
  3. Automatic Correlation: PlayerZero merges frontend + backend data in real time.

If the request fails, PlayerZero can:

  • Flag a new or regressed issue
  • Show the full session + logs + traces
  • Reveal code commits causing the error

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What’s Next?