Metrics

Open Forms produces application metrics (using Open Telemetry).

Note

The exact metric names that show up may be transformed, e.g. Prometheus replaces periods with underscores, and processing pipelines may add prefixes or suffixes.

Important

Some metrics are defined as “global scope”.

These metrics are typically derived from application state introspection, e.g. by performing database (read) queries to aggregate some information. Usually those correspond to an Asynchronous Gauge.

Multiple replicas and/or instances of the same service will produce the same values of the metrics. You need to apply some kind of aggregation to de-duplicate these values. The attribute scope="global" acts as a marker for these type of metrics.

With PromQL for example, you can use avg on the assumption that all values will be equal, so the average will also be identical:

avg by (form_name, type) (otel_submissions_count{scope="global"})

Generic

http.server.duration: Captures how long each HTTP request took, in ms. The metric produces histogram data.
http.server.request.duration (not active): The future replacement of http.server.duration, in seconds. Currently not enabled, but the code is in the Open Telemetry SDK instrumentation already and could possibly be opted-in to.

Application specific

Changed in version 3.4.0: The metrics names have all been prefixed with the openforms namespace, and some metrics have some more renames to be better comply with the OTel naming conventions.

Accounts

openforms.auth.user_count

Reports the number of users in the database. This is a global metric, you must take care in de-duplicating results. Additional attributes are:

scope - fixed, set to global to enable de-duplication.
type - the user type. all, staff or superuser.

Sample PromQL query:

max by (type) (last_over_time(
  otel_user_count{scope="global"}
  [1m]
))

openforms.auth.login_failures

A counter incremented every time a user login fails (typically because of invalid credentials). Does not include the second factor, if enabled. Additional attributes:

http_target - the request path where the login failure occurred, if this happened in a request context.

openforms.auth.user_lockouts

A counter incremented every time a user is locked out because they reached the maximum number of failed attempts. Additional attributes:

http_target - the request path where the login failure occurred, if this happened in a request context.
username - username of the user trying to log in.

openforms.auth.logins

Counter incrementing on every successful login by a user. Additional attributes:

http_target - the request path where the login failure occurred, if this happened in a request context.
username - username of the user trying to log in.

openforms.auth.logouts

Counter incrementing every time a user logs out. Additional attributes:

username - username of the user who logged out.

Forms

Form metrics describe the forms defined by the organization. For submission statistics, see the Submission metrics.

openforms.form_count

The total count of forms defined in the database, ignoring forms that have been moved into the trash. Additional attributes are:

scope - fixed, set to global to enable de-duplication.
type - one of total, live, new_renderer_enabled, translation_enabled, is_appointment or trash. For all but trash the forms in the trash are excluded.

openforms.form_component_count

Keeps track of how often a Formio component type is used in a form. This is only reported for live, non-appointment forms. Additional attributes are:

scope - fixed, set to global to enable de-duplication.
openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form.
openforms.component.type - the Formio component type, e.g. textfield, email, selectboxes…

Submissions

openforms.submission.starts

Counts the number of submissions started by end-users. Additional attributes are:

openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.
openforms.auth.logged_in - true/false, indicates if the user was logged in when starting the submission.
openforms.auth.plugin - if logged in, the ID of the plugin that the user was logged in with.

openforms.submission.completions

Counts the number of form submissions completed by end-users. Additional attributes are:

openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.

openforms.submission.suspensions

Counts the number of submissions suspended/paused by end-users. Additional attributes are:

openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.

openforms.submission.step_saves

Counts the number times a submission step is saved (i.e. the user submits and goes to the next step). Additional attributes are:

openforms.step.name - the name of the step that was saved.
openforms.step.number - the step sequence, starting at 1 for the first step.
openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.
type - create or update. Users can go back to a step and modify details, which results in an update.

openforms.submission_count

The total count of submissions in the database. This is a global metric, you must take care in de-duplicating results. Additional attributes are:

scope - fixed, set to global to enable de-duplication.
openforms.openforms.form.name - the name of the form that the submission belongs to.
type - the kind of submission, possible values are successful, incomplete, errored, other which maps to the associated retention periods.

Sample PromQL query, to report the submissios per stage and form:

max by (type, form_name) (
  last_over_time(
    otel_submissions_count{scope="global"}
    [5m]
  )
)

openforms.attachment_upload.file_size

A histogram of submission attachments, with buckets covering file upload sizes from 0 bytes to 1 GiB (Open Forms by default limits uploads to 50 MB). Additional attributes are:

openforms.step.name - the name of the step that was saved.
openforms.step.number - the step sequence, starting at 1 for the first step.
openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.
content_type - the file type of the attachment.

openforms.submission.attachments_per_submission

A histogram counting the amount of attachments within a submission. Additional attributes are:

openforms.form.uuid - the unique database ID of the form.
openforms.form.name - the name of the form that was submitted.

Plugins

openforms.plugin.usage_count

A gauge reporting how many times each (installed) plugin is used in an instance. This is a global metric, you must take care in de-duplicating results. Additional attributes are:

scope - fixed, set to global to enable de-duplication.
openforms.plugin.module - the feature module the plugin/metric belongs to, such as registrations, prefill, authentication…
openforms.plugin.identifier - the unique identifier for a plugin. The combination of (module, identifier) is guaranteed to be unique.
openforms.plugin.is_enabled - flag to indicate whether the plugin is enabled or not. Disabled plugin metrics should have a value of 0 during normal operation.
openforms.plugin.is_demo - flag that marks demo plugins only available for testing.