CloudWatch Block

The CloudWatch block integrates AWS CloudWatch into your workflows, letting you query log groups, retrieve metric statistics, publish custom metrics, and inspect alarms. Reach for it when a workflow needs to observe or react to the state of your AWS infrastructure.

Overview

When to Use

• Run a CloudWatch Logs Insights query to pull recent log lines from a Lambda or service log group.
• Fetch raw log events from a specific log stream for inspection or downstream processing.
• Discover available log groups or metrics before drilling into a particular one.
• Get metric statistics (e.g. CPUUtilization) to drive conditional logic or alerting.
• Publish custom metric data points back into CloudWatch from your workflow.
• Describe alarms to check whether any monitored resource is in an alarm state.

Configuration

Operation

Required dropdown that selects which CloudWatch action to run. The available options are:

AWS Region

The AWS region to target (e.g. us-east-1). Required for every operation.

Access Key ID / Secret Access Key

AWS credentials used to authenticate the request. Both are required for every operation and stored as secrets — use {{AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}} and {{AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}} to inject them from environment variables.

Log Group Names (logGroupNames)

The log group(s) to operate on, comma-separated or as a single name. Visible for Query Logs (cloudwatch_query_logs) and Get Log Events (cloudwatch_get_log_events).

Insights Query (queryString)

A CloudWatch Logs Insights query string (e.g. fields @timestamp, @message | sort @timestamp desc | limit 20). Visible for Query Logs (cloudwatch_query_logs) only.

Metric Name (metricName)

The name of the metric (e.g. CPUUtilization). Visible for Get Metric Statistics (cloudwatch_get_metric_statistics) and Put Metric Data (cloudwatch_put_metric_data).

Namespace (namespace)

The metric namespace (e.g. AWS/EC2, AWS/Lambda, Custom/MyApp). Visible for Get Metric Statistics (cloudwatch_get_metric_statistics) and Put Metric Data (cloudwatch_put_metric_data).

Inputs & Outputs

• Inputs:

  • operation (string) — Operation to perform
  • awsRegion (string) — AWS region
  • awsAccessKeyId (string) — AWS access key ID
  • awsSecretAccessKey (string) — AWS secret access key
  • logGroupNames (string) — Log group names (used by Query Logs and Get Log Events)
  • queryString (string) — CloudWatch Insights query (used by Query Logs)
  • metricName (string) — Metric name (used by Get Metric Statistics and Put Metric Data)
  • namespace (string) — Metric namespace (used by Get Metric Statistics and Put Metric Data)

• Outputs:

  • logEvents (json) — Log events
  • metrics (json) — Metrics data
  • queryId (string) — Query ID

Tools

Each operation maps to a dedicated tool. The block selects the tool at runtime based on the value of the operation input.

• CloudWatch Query Logs (cloudwatch_query_logs) — Runs a CloudWatch Log Insights query against one or more log groups. Key params: logGroupNames, queryString, startTime, endTime, optional limit. Returns results (array) and status (string).

• CloudWatch Describe Log Groups (cloudwatch_describe_log_groups) — Lists available CloudWatch log groups. Optional params: prefix (name filter), limit. Returns logGroups (array).

• CloudWatch Get Log Events (cloudwatch_get_log_events) — Retrieves log events from a specific CloudWatch log stream. Key params: logGroupName, logStreamName, optional startTime, endTime, limit. Returns events (array).

• CloudWatch List Metrics (cloudwatch_list_metrics) — Lists available CloudWatch metrics. Optional params: namespace, metricName, recentlyActive (only metrics active in the last 3 hours), limit. Returns metrics (array).

• CloudWatch Get Metric Statistics (cloudwatch_get_metric_statistics) — Gets statistics for a CloudWatch metric over a time range. Key params: namespace, metricName, startTime, endTime, period (granularity in seconds), statistics (array of Average/Sum/Minimum/Maximum/SampleCount), optional dimensions (JSON string). Returns label (string) and datapoints (array).

• CloudWatch Publish Metric (cloudwatch_put_metric_data) — Publishes a custom metric data point to CloudWatch. Key params: namespace, metricName, value, optional unit (e.g. Count, Seconds, Bytes), dimensions (JSON string). Returns success (boolean).

• CloudWatch Describe Alarms (cloudwatch_describe_alarms) — Lists and filters CloudWatch alarms. Optional params: alarmNamePrefix, stateValue (OK, ALARM, INSUFFICIENT_DATA), alarmType (MetricAlarm, CompositeAlarm), limit. Returns alarms (array).

YAML Example

cloudwatch_1:
  type: cloudwatch
  name: "CloudWatch"
  inputs:
    operation: "cloudwatch_query_logs"
    awsRegion: "us-east-1"
    awsAccessKeyId: "{{AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}}"
    awsSecretAccessKey: "{{AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}}"
    logGroupNames: "/aws/lambda/my-function"
    queryString: "fields @timestamp, @message | sort @timestamp desc | limit 20"
  connections:
    outgoing:
      - target: next-block-id