Traces explorer

The Traces explorer searches every span your services send, and opens the trace each one belongs to.

Use this page when you need to find specific requests: the slowest ones, the failed ones, or the ones that touched a given route, customer or host. To see a service’s overall health first, start from Services.

Open Traces in the sidebar (/traces-explorer). The page has three tabs: Explorer, Funnels and Views.

Traces explorer in List view: filters on the left, the query bar on top and one row per span with service, name, duration and HTTP method.

Search spans

Write a filter in the search box with the search syntax, pick a time range in the top bar and click Run Query. The scope selector next to the search box limits the query:

Scope	Searches	Use it to
All Spans	Every span	Find any operation, such as one database query
Root Spans	Only the first span of each trace, the one with no parent (root span)	Look at whole requests as the user saw them
Entrypoint Spans	The first span of a request in each service (entrypoint span)	Look at the requests each service received

The scope selector next to the search box, open on All Spans, Root Spans and Entrypoint Spans.

The filter panel on the left lists quick filters. By default: Duration, Deployment Environment, Has Error (Status), Service Name, Name, Rpc Method, Response Status Code, Http Host, Http Method, Http Route, Http Url and Trace Id. Duration is a range; the others list values to tick. Each filter shows the attribute it filters on, with an icon for its kind. Above the filters:

Settings opens the Edit quick filters sheet on the right, to add, remove and reorder filters for everyone in the organization.
Reset All clears the selected values.
Collapse Filters folds the panel into a narrow rail of icons that still marks the active filters with a badge. The explorer remembers it.

The Edit quick filters sheet: the added filters, which can be dragged to reorder, and other attributes to tick, with a search box on top.

The filter panel collapsed to a rail of icons; badges mark the two active filters, Has Error and Service Name.

Views

The toolbar switches between four views of the same query:

View	Shows
List	One row per span: timestamp, service, span name, duration, HTTP method and response status code
Traces	One row per trace, from its root span: service, name, duration, span count and trace ID
Time series	The query’s aggregation as a chart
Table	The query’s aggregation as a table, one row per group

Time series and Table use the query’s aggregation and group by; see Query builder. In List, Order by sorts the spans, and Columns and options opens the Edit columns sheet to add, remove and reorder columns with any attribute.

The Edit columns sheet: the added fields in display order, each with a drag handle and Remove, and the other fields to add, with a search box on top.

Time series view: the query’s aggregation, every and add-ons (Group By, Having, Order By, Limit, Legend format) above a chart of span count over time.

Click a row to open its trace; see Trace details.

Example: the slowest requests of a service

In the search box, type service.name = 'frontend' and set the scope to Entrypoint Spans, so you get one row per request the service received.
In the List view, set Order by to duration_nano (desc).
Click Run Query. The slowest requests are at the top; click one to open its trace.
Click Save this view at the bottom and name it frontend slowest, to come back to it later.

The full walkthrough is in Investigate a slow endpoint.

Export, alert, add to dashboard

Above the results:

Download exports the List or Traces view as csv or jsonl, up to 10k, 30k or 50k rows. Table and Time series results export the same way.
Create an alert starts an alert rule from the current query.
Add to dashboard adds the query as a panel to a new or existing dashboard.

Both need a query that has run.

Trace details

Click a row to open its trace at /trace/<trace-id>: a header with the request’s service, duration and status, a flame graph, a waterfall and the details of each span. How to read it, with a worked example, is in Trace details.

Span details

Click a span in a trace to see its attributes, events, logs and host metrics. See Span details.

Funnels

A funnel follows requests through an ordered set of steps. Each step is a service and a span name, with optional filters. In the Funnels tab, click New funnel, name it and add steps; spans can also be added from a trace with Add to Trace Funnel. The results show the Overall Funnel Metrics, the traces that pass every step, and the Slowest 5 traces and Traces with errors. Editing funnels needs the Editor or Admin role.

Funnels tab: the list of funnels with search, sort and New funnel.

A funnel: its steps on the left, each a service and span name with filters, and the Overall Funnel Metrics and spans per step on the right.

Saved views

A view saves the query, the explorer view and its columns. The bar at the bottom of the explorer has Select a view and Save this view: give the view a label and a colour. With a view open, Update this view saves changes and Clear this view starts over. The Views tab lists the saved views, to open, edit or delete them.

Views tab: saved views with their colour, creator and creation time, and actions to edit, open or delete.

Saving, editing and deleting views needs the Editor or Admin role.