Prefect's Observability Suite

Data pipelines are growing more interconnected every day. But with this scale comes complexity: a single workflow might query multiple databases, call several APIs, and write to various storage systems - all while other workflows compete for the same resources.

This scale has revealed a critical truth: when issues arise, understanding the impact isn't just about checking if a workflow succeeded. You need to know how it affected - and was affected by - every system it touched.

Today, we’re rolling out a suite of features that fundamentally change how teams monitor, debug, and scale their data systems. These additions make the invisible connections between workflows and external systems explicit and controllable through observability.

Monitor

When customers report consistently late results, or teams notice rising failure rates, manually combing through thousands of logs isn't just inefficient—it poses a serious risk to the business. For teams who orchestrate thousands of runs daily, knowing what broke isn't enough - you need to understand patterns across deployments, spot potential bottlenecks before they impact customers, and quickly identify which workflows need attention. To address this problem, we built Enhanced Operational Dashboards that help teams to quickly identify data patterns and take action.

Enhanced Operational Dashboards: System-Wide Intelligence

Our Enhanced Operational Dashboards enable teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive system management by grouping workflow analytics by deployments, work pools, or custom tags. These dashboards introduce powerful analytics and grouping capabilities that let teams:

• Aggregate and analyze workflow patterns across deployments, tags, and work pools
• Track performance metrics like duration, success rates, and lateness by customer or team
• Identify infrastructure-related issues through work pool analytics
• Analyze patterns across groups of related runs

Availability: Enhanced Operational Dashboards are in beta and are currently available to Prefect Cloud users. Not a Prefect Cloud user? See our Enhanced Operational Dashboards in action by booking a demo.

Debug

Modern data systems don't exist in isolation. When something breaks in production, the real challenge isn't just finding what failed - it's understanding the ripple effects through your entire system. Did bad data propagate to your warehouse? Did it impact model training? Which customers are affected?

In light of this, we've built Resources and Run Tracing, debugging tools designed to provide both the high-level map of your system and the granular details you need to resolve issues confidently.

Resources: Map Your Data Ecosystem

Rather than viewing workflows as isolated units of compute, Resources reveals the interconnected nature of your data platform - from S3 buckets and databases to API endpoints and model artifacts. Teams have a unified way to track, visualize, and control these interactions, allowing them to:

• Map connections between workflows and external systems
• View events associated with each resource interaction
• Track data lineage across their entire platform
• Identify the impact radius of any data quality issues
• Understand downstream dependencies before making changes

Availability: Resources is currently in beta and is available to Prefect Cloud users who opt into beta testing. If you are interested in joining the beta, reach out to your CSM. Not a Prefect Cloud user? See Resources in action by scheduling a demo.

Run Tracing: Visibility Into Your Workflow Dependencies

While Resources gives you the big picture, Run Tracing provides the execution-level details. It transforms how teams debug by offering clear visibility into dependencies and event-based execution paths, allowing teams to:

• Track execution paths across interconnected workflows
• Maintain single trace IDs across event-driven systems
• Query workflow executions by multiple attributes
• Track loosely coupled workflows as one end-to-end process

Availability: Run Tracing is currently available to Prefect Cloud users. Not a Prefect Cloud user? View our Enhanced Operational Dashboards in action by booking a demo.

Scale

Building reliable data systems isn't just about handling today's workload—it's about being ready for tomorrow's growth. As organizations scale, workflows increasingly compete for shared resources which risks the possibility of overloading systems like databases or APIs. This forces teams to choose between potential failure, overprovisioning infrastructure, or building complex systems as work-arounds to limitations. To ease these growing pains, we built Deployment Concurrency to give teams precise control over workflow execution.

Deployment Concurrency: Smart Control Over Workflow Execution

With Deployment Concurrency, instead of building complex throttling systems or overprovisioning infrastructure, teams can now:

• Set specific concurrency limits for each deployment
• Choose intelligent queuing patterns for handling peak loads
• Skip or queue additional runs when limits are reached
• Manage execution through both UI and code interfaces
• Protect shared resources from concurrent access issues

Availability: This feature is available to all Prefect OSS and Cloud users. Learn more by viewing the docs.

Building For The Future

Modern data platforms demand more than just reliable execution. As organizations scale, they need to monitor thousands of workflow runs, debug complex interdependencies, and manage growing infrastructure demands - all while maintaining system reliability and efficiency.

That's exactly what this new suite of features delivers. Enhanced Operational Dashboards transform overwhelming data into actionable intelligence. When issues arise, Resources and Run Tracing provide both system-wide visibility and granular debugging capabilities. And with Deployment Concurrency, teams can scale confidently while protecting their critical resources.

These features represent more than just technical improvements - they embody our vision for the future of workflow orchestration. By providing tools that enable teams to understand and manage their workflows at a system-wide level, we're helping organizations build more resilient, efficient, and trustworthy data platforms.

Coming Soon

Our commitment to simplifying complex infrastructure doesn’t stop there. We are always building and iterating to continually add value to our Prefect community. We're actively working on:

• Native OpenTelemetry integration for unified observability with tools like Datadog and Splunk
• Enhanced dbt integration for seamless orchestration of transformation jobs
• Simplified cloud infrastructure through Coiled and Modal integrations
• Enhanced security controls including WorkPool ACLs, IP allowlists, and authenticated webhooks
• Per-task infrastructure configuration for dynamic compute allocation

See Prefect Cloud In Action

Want a personal walkthrough of Prefect’s observability suite? Contact our team for a customized demo of these new features.