Telflo Docs

The canvas is a graph editor. Components are nodes, and connections are edges. A connected chain of receivers, processors, and exporters forms a pipeline.

Work on the canvas

Action	How
Add a component	Drag it from the palette onto the canvas.
Move a node	Drag the node.
Connect two nodes	Drag from a source node's output handle to a target node's input handle.
Select	Select a node or edge.
Multi-select	Shift-select multiple nodes.
Pan	Drag on empty canvas space.
Zoom	Scroll, or use the on-canvas controls.

Toolbar actions for the canvas:

Duplicate copies the selected nodes. Shortcut: Ctrl/Cmd+D.
Delete removes the selected nodes. Shortcut: Delete or Backspace.
Undo and Redo step through canvas changes. Shortcuts: Ctrl/Cmd+Z and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z.

Clear canvas, which removes all components, is in the action cluster at the canvas's top right, next to Add pipeline.

Connection rules

Telflo enforces the collector's connection rules as you draw edges.

A receiver has outgoing connections only.
An exporter has incoming connections only.
A processor has incoming and outgoing connections. Several receivers can feed one processor, and one processor can feed several exporters.
A connector has both, in two different pipelines.
An extension has no connections.

Invalid connections are rejected or flagged. See Validation.

Pipelines

A pipeline carries one signal type through a chain of components. Telflo supports the three OpenTelemetry signal types and custom-named pipelines.

traces, metrics, and logs
Custom names, such as traces/production, metrics/staging, or logs/audit

Edges define pipeline membership

Pipelines are defined by the edges you draw, not by the nodes alone.

Each edge belongs to one pipeline.
A single node, such as a shared batch processor, can belong to several pipelines.
Each pipeline is color-coded on the canvas.

Connect pipelines with a connector

A connector is the exporter of one pipeline and the receiver of another. It can change the signal type in between: the spanmetrics connector ends a traces pipeline and starts a metrics pipeline. It can also keep the signal type: the forward connector merges several same-signal pipelines into one, or fans one pipeline out into many, and the routing connector sends telemetry to different same-signal pipelines based on OTTL conditions. Neither forward nor routing can change the signal type; validation reports a connection across different signal types.

The spanmetrics connector joins two pipelines: spans flow in from the traces pipeline, and request, error, and duration metrics flow out into the metrics pipeline.

Manage pipelines

Select Add pipeline on the canvas to create a pipeline and set its name. The pipeline controls also change a pipeline's color, toggle its visibility, and delete it.

Connected components appear under service.pipelines in the generated YAML.

Next steps

Configure each component in the configuration panel. See Configuring components.

Canvas & pipelines