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Faster, easier Network Spans Forwarding in Embrace

Colin Contreary
Network Monitoring
12 February 2026 • 4 min read
Network request trace connecting from a smartphone to a backend system

With Network Spans Forwarding in Embrace, you're only a click away from connecting client-side network requests to your backend observability platforms.

Networking issues in mobile and web apps can be incredibly challenging to solve without understanding the full journey that network requests take from the client to the server. Stop me if you’d heard this one before:

  • Users are unable to complete a key action in the app.
  • The mobile team spots failing network requests that indicate a backend issue and asks the backend team to investigate.
  • The backend team finds a few problematic calls, but cannot connect them to the underlying user sessions.
  • Both teams struggle to track down the source of the issue.

Now imagine a slightly different majorly improved scenario:

  • The mobile team looks up unique identifiers on each of these failing network requests and shares them with the backend team.
  • The backend team searches for these unique identifiers in their observability platform, finds the network requests, traces their journey through the backend system, and can quickly understand what’s happening to these users.

And no, this is not just a thought exercise. With Network Spans Forwarding, Embrace provides a powerful way to trace network requests from mobile and web apps to your backend systems for complete end-to-end visibility.

In this post, we’re excited to share that we’ve made it easier and faster to configure Network Spans Forwarding. Now, as soon as you spot a networking issue, you’re only a click away from connecting these client-side network requests to your backend observability platforms.

How Network Spans Forwarding works

Network request trace connecting from a smartphone to a backend system

Let’s start with some background on how this functionality works. The Embrace SDK intercepts every network request your app makes and adds a unique identifier to it using w3c traceparents. These traceparent identifiers automatically propagate through the tracing products of Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Chronosphere, Datadog, and other observability platforms.

Within the Embrace dashboard, you can select the domains you’re interested in, and we’ll forward the associated network spans to those destinations. You can then use the trace-id portion of the traceparent to find your forwarded spans in your destination product.

Even better, you can also link from a forwarded network span to the individual session in Embrace with the emb.dashboard_session span attribute. Check out all available metadata on forwarded spans in our documentation.

Diagram showing a network request injected with a trace ID

How to enable Network Spans Forwarding

If you haven’t done so already, you’ll first need to set up the observability platforms where you want to forward your network spans. Head to our Data Destinations documentation for setup guides, and then make changes easily in Settings > Integrations > Data Destinations.

Settings page in the Embrace dashboard

You can now configure everything needed by heading to Settings > Integrations > Network Spans Forwarding in the Embrace dashboard.

Embrace dashboard settings page

Quick note: All configuration is managed at the organization level. Domain patterns, app selections, and destination settings are shared across your entire organization, making it easy to maintain consistent forwarding rules.

Another quick note: Network Spans Forwarding is available for Enterprise plans and Trial accounts. If you’re on a Pro or Free plan, please contact support at support@embrace.io to upgrade to Enterprise.

Set up apps

Choose which of your organization’s apps you’d like to send network spans from.

Embrace dashboard settings page for Network Spans Forwarding

Set up domains

You can add domains by entering the exact string to match on or by creating a regex to match patterns on.

Embrace dashboard settings page for Network Spans Forwarding, showing the Domains section

Scroll down and save your settings to enable them. For tips on validating your configuration or troubleshooting issues, check out our documentation.

Adding new domains directly from Embrace dashboard pages

Once you have your Network Spans Forwarding settings in place, you can add new domains in a single click from the Network Path Details page or the User Timeline page.

Network Path Details page

Network Path Details page in the Embrace dashboard

User Timeline page

In the User Timeline page, you can expand any network request row to access the “Enable Network Spans Forwarding” button.

User Timeline page in the Embrace dashboard

If you turn on a domain and realize you need to make changes, no problem! Just head to Settings > Integrations > Network Spans Forwarding, make edits, and click save. Embrace will update the configured domain patterns and start/stop forwarding based on your changes.

Wrapping up

Network Spans Forwarding helps engineering teams see the full journey of network requests from the client to the server, and it’s incredibly helpful for understanding the source and impact of networking issues on your end-users.

We’re excited to make it faster and easier for you to configure Network Spans Forwarding in Embrace. We also provide additional ways to connect client-side telemetry with your existing observability backends. Check out our Logs Forwarding and Metrics Forwarding capabilities to learn more.

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Author
Colin Contreary
Colin Contreary
Colin Contreary is the head of content at Embrace. He brings 16 years of writing experience across comedy, musicals, and technical writing. Colin has been with the Embrace team since 2020. His passion for technology makes him a notable member of the team. He has self-taught web development skills that support his technical writing.
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