Set up CI Visibility on GitHub Actions Workflows

Docs > Continuous Integration Visibility > CI Pipeline Visibility in Datadog > Set up CI Visibility on GitHub Actions Workflows

Overview

GitHub Actions is an automation tool that allows you to build, test, and deploy your code in GitHub. Create workflows that automate every step of your development process, streamlining software updates and enhancing code quality with CI/CD features integrated into your repositories.

Set up CI Visibility in GitHub Actions to track the execution of your workflows, identify performance bottlenecks, troubleshoot operational issues, and optimize your deployment processes.

Compatibility

Pipeline Visibility	Platform	Definition
Running pipelines	Running pipelines	View pipeline executions that are running. Queued or waiting pipelines show with status “Running” on Datadog.
CI jobs failure analysis	CI jobs failure analysis	Analysis of the root causes of failed CI jobs based on relevant logs using LLM models.
Partial retries	Partial pipelines	View partially retried pipeline executions.
Logs correlation	Logs correlation	Correlate pipeline and job spans to logs and enable job log collection.
Infrastructure metric correlation	Infrastructure metric correlation	Correlate jobs to infrastructure host metrics for GitHub jobs.
Custom tags and measures at runtime	Custom tags and measures at runtime	Configure custom tags and measures at runtime.
Queue time	Queue time	View the amount of time pipeline jobs sit in the queue before processing.
Approval wait time	Approval wait time	View the amount of time workflow runs and workflow jobs wait for manual approvals.
Custom spans	Custom spans	Configure custom spans for your pipelines.
Filter CI Jobs on the critical path	Filter CI Jobs on the critical path	Filter by jobs on the critical path.
Execution time	Execution time	View the amount of time pipelines have been running jobs.

The following GitHub versions are supported:

GitHub.com (SaaS)
GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) 3.5.0 or later

Configure the Datadog integration

Configure a GitHub App

The GitHub Actions integration uses a private GitHub App to collect workflow information. If you already have an app, you can skip to the next section.

Go to the GitHub integration tile.
Click + Create GitHub App.
Configure the integration for a personal or organization account and enter the name of the GitHub organization.
Select the Datadog features you want to enable for the GitHub App.
In the Edit Permissions section, grant Actions: Read Only access.
Click Create App in GitHub to finish the app creation process on GitHub.
Give the app a name, for example, Datadog CI Visibility.
Click Install GitHub App and follow the instructions on GitHub.

Configure CI Visibility for GitHub Actions

After the GitHub App is created and installed, enable CI Visibility on the accounts and/or repositories you want visibility into.

In Datadog, navigate to Software Delivery > CI Visibility > Add a Pipeline Provider and select GitHub.
Click Enable Account for the account you want to enable.
Enable CI Visibility for the whole account by clicking the toggle next to Enable CI Visibility.
Alternatively, you can enable individual repositories by scrolling through the repository list and clicking the Enable CI Visibility toggle.

Pipelines appear immediately after enabling CI Visibility for any account or repository.

Disable CI Visiblity for GitHub Actions

To disable the CI Visibility GitHub Actions integration:

Go to the CI GitHub Settings page.
Choose the GitHub account that you want to disable CI Visibility for, and click Account Enabled.
Untoggle Enable CI Visibility, or choose which repository you want to disable it for individually.

Collect job logs

The GitHub Actions CI Visibility integration also allows you to automatically forward workflow job logs to Log Management.

To enable job logs collection:

In Datadog, navigate to Software Delivery > CI Visibility > Add a Pipeline Provider and select GitHub.
Click Enable Account for the account you want to enable.
Enable Job Logs Collection for the whole account by clicking the toggle next to Enable Job Logs Collection.
Alternatively, you can enable individual repositories by scrolling through the repository list and clicking the Enable Job Logs Collection toggle.

Immediately after toggling logs collection, workflow job logs are forwarded to Datadog Log Management. Log files larger than 1 GiB are truncated.

Logs are billed separately from CI Visibility. Log retention, exclusion, and indexes are configured in Log Management. Logs for GitHub jobs can be identified by the datadog.product:cipipeline and source:github tags.

Correlate infrastructure metrics to jobs

The GitHub Actions CI Visibility integration allows for correlation between infrastructure and jobs. To achieve this, ensure the Datadog Agent is running on the host where the jobs are executed. Depending on the configuration, additional steps might be required:

For Actions Runner Controller: No additional setup required. Due to limitations in the Datadog Agent, jobs shorter than the minimum collection interval of the Datadog Agent might not always display infrastructure correlation metrics. To adjust this value, see Datadog Agent configuration template and change min_collection_interval to be less than 15 seconds.
For other configurations: To correlate jobs with the hosts running them, ensure the GitHub runner name matches the machine’s hostname.

To see the metrics, click on a job span in the trace view. A window opens with an Infrastructure tab displaying the host metrics.

CI jobs failure analysis

If job logs collection is enabled, CI Visibility computes analysis using LLM models for failed CI jobs based on relevant logs coming from GitHub Actions.

For a full explanation, see the guide on using CI jobs failure analysis.