Injecting OTel context into Guest API WebSocket connection

I’m building a custom chat UI using the raw WebSocket Guest API instead of the bundled widget to keep our tracing context intact. The goal is to propagate the traceparent header from our frontend into the Genesys Cloud session so the spans link up in Jaeger. I’m establishing the connection to wss://api.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/webchat/clients/ws and sending the connect payload with custom attributes, but the traceparent string isn’t appearing in the Data Action context on the backend. Here’s the connection payload I’m sending:

{
 "action": "connect",
 "attributes": {
 "traceparent": "00-4bf92f3577b34da6a3ce929d0e0e4736-00f067aa0ba902b7-01",
 "userId": "guest-123"
 }
}

The connection succeeds with a 200 OK, and I can send messages normally. I’ve verified the Data Action is reading request.attributes.traceparent, but it comes back null. Am I injecting the context in the wrong part of the handshake, or does the Guest API strip custom headers before routing to Architect? The docs on custom attributes are sparse regarding WebSocket payloads.

The WebSocket connect message doesn’t support header injection for tracing headers like traceparent. You’re hitting a protocol limitation there. Instead, pass the trace context in the attributes block of the connect payload. It’s the standard way to pass custom metadata into the session.

{
 "type": "connect",
 "channelId": "your-channel-id",
 "attributes": {
 "traceparent": "00-0af7651916cd43dd8448eb211c80319c-b7ad6b7169203331-01",
 "customKey": "customValue"
 }
}

Make sure your downstream handlers read from attributes if you need that data later.