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getting-started · bullmq

Getting started with unqueue

A step-by-step guide to connecting your BullMQ Redis instance and getting live queue visibility in under five minutes.

Parth Koshti

unqueue connects directly to the Redis instance your BullMQ workers use. There’s no agent to deploy, no SDK to instrument, and no schema changes — just a connection URL.

Prerequisites

  • A running BullMQ setup (workers + Redis)
  • Redis reachable from the unqueue server (TLS supported)
  • An unqueue account (self-hosted or cloud)

Step 1: Create a workspace

Sign in to unqueue and create a workspace for your project. A workspace groups your environments (dev, staging, prod) and controls team access.

Step 2: Add an environment

Inside your workspace, create an environment and give it a name that matches your deployment (e.g. production or staging).

Step 3: Connect your Redis

Navigate to Connections and add a new Redis connection. Paste your connection URL:

rediss://username:password@your-redis.host:6380/0

unqueue will validate the connection, check your ACL permissions, and begin scanning for queues.

ACL recommendations

For read-only monitoring, create a dedicated ACL user:

ACL SETUSER unqueue-read on >your-password ~bull:* &* +@read +ping +info +psubscribe +subscribe

For admin actions (retry/remove jobs, pause/drain queues), extend the ACL:

ACL SETUSER unqueue-admin on >your-password ~bull:* &* +@read +@write +@pubsub +ping +info

Step 4: Watch your queues

Once connected, unqueue scans for all queues matching your key prefix (default: bull). Within seconds you’ll see queue names, job counts by state, and a live activity feed.

Click any queue to see the full job list. Click any job to inspect its data, progress, logs, and return value.

What’s next?

  • Set up alerts: configure a Discord webhook to get notified on queue failures
  • Invite teammates: go to Settings → Members to add collaborators
  • Bookmark queues: pin frequently-monitored queues for quick access