Publishing logs from external system via API

[gbreavin]

I have a use case where I'm considering using Nebula logger to capture logs from an external system. There is a process where it would be useful for us to have log records from that external system to give more context to parts of the process that are in Salesforce (and also have logs).

My question is - is this a pattern that is supported or possible? Platform Events are the obvious choice, though need reconciling to make sure they are actually published; there's also Apex (would likely need to wrap in a web service, unless there's something already)... What about creating the Log and LogEntry records directly? Obviously possible, but concerned what we lose out on doing it direct vs an interface like the Apex methods.

Are there any considerations (or other methods) that we should consider?

[jongpie]

Hi @gbreavin - great question! There is currently an open pull request - PR #767 - that will add a custom REST endpoint that will support saving external logs in Nebula Logger. The PR still needs a little more work before it's ready, but the idea is that external systems will be able to send their logging data to this endpoint in your Salesforce org, using OpenTelemetry's (OTel) standard for logs, and Nebula Logger will convert it from OTel to Nebula Logger's data model. My hope is that by using the OTel standard, it will be easy for external systems to leverage - OTel has SDKs for several popular languages, like Java, C#/.NET, Node/JS, python, Go, etc.

The other methods you mentioned (creating the platform events or creating the log/log entry records yourself) would also work, but you would have to build that yourself - there's nothing in Nebula Logger right now that would really help make that easier via the API.

[gbreavin]

Thanks @jongpie, the quick reply is much appreciated!

[jongpie]

No problem! My hope is to finish PR #767 in the next few weeks - I'll add another comment here once it's been released.

[JeroenSfdc]

We did just that, create a custom platform event, External_Log__e, allow create for our API-only user. Have simple event triggered flow, which calls invocable which calls Nebula using native methods. It's not great, but very helpful. In our case specifically to enable MuleSoft to log certain types of errors in their end into Salesforce with bespoke tag.