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Chatwoot on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Chatwoot is an open-source, multi-channel helpdesk and customer-engagement platform (email, live chat, social, and messaging inboxes, SLA tracking, and reporting) — a GDPR-compliant alternative to Zendesk or Intercom. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Chatwoot on Cloud Run module on Google Cloud: deploy it, access and verify it, run it day-to-day, observe it, diagnose common problems, and tear it down.

The lab focuses on operating the Cloud Run module and the Google Cloud platform, not on Chatwoot product features. For the complete list of provisioned services and every configuration input (organised by group), see the Configuration Guide — this lab deliberately does not duplicate that detail so it stays accurate over time.

Objectives​

By the end of this lab you will be able to:

  • Deploy the module from the RAD platform and locate the resources it provisions.
  • Access and verify the running service.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and jobs.
  • Observe the service (and its co-located Sidekiq worker) with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.
  • Diagnose and resolve the most common deployment and runtime issues.
  • Tear the deployment down cleanly.

Prerequisites​

  • Services_GCP deployed in the target project (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL, NFS/Redis, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
  • A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
  • gcloud CLI authenticated: gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login.
  • Project Owner (or equivalent) IAM on the project.
  • RAD platform access with permission to deploy modules into the project.

Set these shell variables once; every task below reuses them:

export PROJECT="<your-gcp-project-id>"
export REGION="us-central1"          # the region you deploy into

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

  1. In the RAD platform, open Chatwoot (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.

  2. The platform builds a custom Chatwoot container image (chatwoot/chatwoot wrapped with a cloud entrypoint), provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15, with pgvector) database with its Secret Manager secrets (SECRET_KEY_BASE and the database password), a Cloud Storage bucket, a Filestore NFS mount for attachments, and Redis. It then runs two chained initialization jobs — db-init (creates the database, role, and grants, including cloudsqlsuperuser) followed by chatwoot-prepare (rails db:chatwoot_prepare, using the built app image, to create the schema). First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation and the custom image build dominate).

  3. When it completes, discover the resources with name-agnostic filters (so the commands keep working regardless of the deployment suffix):

    SERVICE=$(gcloud run services list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~chatwoot" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
    echo "Service: $SERVICE"
    echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

  1. Confirm the service is healthy. Chatwoot's login/onboarding page responds with HTTP 200 and needs no authentication:

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"   # expect 200

  2. Confirm the chained initialization jobs both completed successfully before trusting the schema is ready:

    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-chatwoot-prepare" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

  3. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. On first visit Chatwoot's onboarding UI prompts you to create the initial administrator account interactively — no pre-seeded admin credential exists in Secret Manager. Fill in your name, email, and a password to finish onboarding. ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP defaults to "false", so afterwards only invited users can join; flip it temporarily via environment_variables if you need public self-service signup.

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]​

  1. Inspect the service and its revisions (each deploy creates an immutable revision; traffic shifts to the newest healthy one):

    gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

  2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the service spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual gcloud edit (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Chatwoot's Sidekiq worker (background job delivery, notifications, reports) and ActionCable (real-time UI updates) run co-located inside the same container and only work while a request is being served or during the post-request keep-warm window (cpu_always_allocated = false by default). For production, set min_instance_count >= 1 and cpu_always_allocated = true to keep background delivery continuous.

  3. Update the application version by changing the application_version input (the chatwoot/chatwoot image tag) in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out.

  4. Manage secrets and jobs:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~chatwoot"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init + chatwoot-prepare

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=chatwoot --project="$PROJECT"

  6. Check attachment persistence — uploaded files live on Filestore NFS at /opt/chatwoot/storage, not the auto-provisioned storage-suffixed GCS bucket:

    gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~chatwoot"
    gcloud filestore instances list --project="$PROJECT"

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]​

  1. Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer. Both the Rails web process and the co-located Sidekiq worker write to the same container stdout/stderr:

    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50

    Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="cloud_run_revision" AND resource.labels.service_name="<service>".

  2. Monitoring — open the Cloud Run dashboard for the service and review request count, request latency (P50/P95/P99), instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. If an uptime check is enabled (uptime_check_config), confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks, and review Alerting → Policies.

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

Durable techniques for the failure modes you are most likely to hit. These are platform-level diagnostics and do not change with Chatwoot releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved. The startup probe targets GET / and allows an initial 60-second delay plus up to 30 retries at a 15-second period (~8 minutes) — sized to absorb chatwoot-prepare finishing ahead of the app container. 
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
  • Initialization job failed: chatwoot-prepare depends on db-init completing first; if schema prep fails with must be superuser on CREATE EXTENSION, the cloudsqlsuperuser grant in db-init did not land. List executions and read the failed one's logs: 
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-chatwoot-prepare" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE and the DB password secret exists. Remember Cloud Run reaches Postgres over a Unix socket (/cloudsql/<instance>), not a 127.0.0.1 TCP loopback — that loopback form only applies on the GKE variant.
  • Background jobs/notifications not delivering but the UI loads fine: Sidekiq only runs while the container is alive. Check min_instance_count and cpu_always_allocated — at min=0/cpu_always_allocated=false, Sidekiq pauses between requests and the keep-warm window.
  • Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log. A nonexistent application_version tag (e.g. an inherited default from another app) fails the pull with MANIFEST_UNKNOWN — confirm the tag exists on Docker Hub for chatwoot/chatwoot.
  • 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas (including the critical rule never to rotate SECRET_KEY_BASE after first boot, and never to disable enable_redis).

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]​

On the Deployments page, open the deployment and click the Trash icon (Delete). Delete runs terraform destroy and is irreversible (the deployment record is retained for history). If a deployment is stuck and the RAD platform can no longer manage it (for example after manual changes that conflict with the Terraform state), use Purge instead — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources (it makes RAD forget the project). This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, NFS-hosted attachments, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, NFS/Redis, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule builds the custom Chatwoot image, provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15 + pgvector), secrets, storage, NFS, Redis, and runs the chained db-init → chatwoot-prepare jobs
2 — Access & verifyManualHealth check (GET /) passes; init jobs confirmed successful; create the initial admin account in the UI
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/jobs, DB access, verify attachment persistence
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging (web + Sidekiq); review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, init-job, database, background-delivery, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

By · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

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