--- title: How to View Traces (public) description: Search, filter, and inspect traces and spans to investigate requests across supported DigitalOcean services and resources. product: Insights url: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/insights/how-to/view-traces/ last_updated: "2026-10-09" --- > **For AI agents:** The documentation index is at [https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt](https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of pages use the same URL with `index.html.md` in place of the HTML page (for example, append `index.html.md` to the directory path instead of opening the HTML document). # How to View Traces (public) DigitalOcean Insights provides observability for supported resources through metrics, logs, traces, custom dashboards, and metric alerts. **Note**: This feature is in [public preview](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/product-lifecycle/index.html.md#public-preview). To use it, opt in from the [**Feature Preview** page](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/feature-preview). Traces help you investigate how requests move across supported DigitalOcean services and resources. You can search and filter trace data, review request latency and errors, and inspect individual operations to troubleshoot application behavior. To access traces, go to the [DigitalOcean Control Panel](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/), in the left menu, click **DATA & LEARNING**, click **Insights**, and then click the **Traces** tab. The **Traces** tab displays trace activity over the selected time range, with a chart at the top and a results table below. You can view the results in two ways: - **Traces** displays complete request paths. Each trace contains one or more spans that show how the request was processed across services. - **Spans** displays individual operations within traces. ## Enable Insights During Resource Creation After you opt in to the public preview, you can enable the available Insights telemetry from the resource creation page when you create a supported DigitalOcean resource. For Droplets and GPU Droplets, select **Install the Observability agent** to install the agent during resource creation. For supported managed resources that do not require the Observability agent, the resource creation page displays the available logs and traces options directly. When creating [Managed Agents](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/index.html.md) resources, Insights is enabled by default. ## Set the Region At the top of the **Traces** tab, click the **Region** dropdown menu to select the region whose traces you want to view. Traces return data from one region at a time. ## Set the Time Range and Refresh Interval The time range, timezone, and refresh interval apply to the traces and spans displayed on the **Traces** tab. ### Set the Time Range To set the time range, in the top-right corner, click the **Time range** dropdown menu to select a relative range from **Last 5 minutes** through **Last 7 days**, or specify an absolute **From** and **To** range. Use the **Timezone** field to select the timezone used to display metric timestamps. The default is your local browser timezone. ### Set the Refresh Interval To set the refresh interval, in the top-right corner, click the **Refresh interval** dropdown menu to select **Off**, **15 sec**, **30 sec**, or **60 sec**. Click the refresh icon to refresh the metric data immediately. ## Filter Traces To filter the trace data displayed, use the **Filters** section on the left: - **Status** filters by trace or span status. Select **ERROR** or **OK**. - **Service** filters by the service associated with the trace or span. - **Duration** filters results by duration. Drag the minimum and maximum values on the slider to set the duration range. - **Attributes** filters by span attributes. Click **Add attribute**, and then search for or select an available attribute. To clear a filter, click **Clear** next to the corresponding filter section. To remove all selected filters, click **Clear all filters** at the bottom of the **Filters** section. ## View a Trace Above the results table, click **Spans** or **Traces** to switch between individual operations and complete request flows. When viewing spans, the table displays the **Span name**, **Service**, **Duration**, **Status**, **Time**, and **Trace ID** for each span. When viewing traces, the table displays the **Trace ID**, **Root service**, **Duration**, **Spans**, **Status**, and **Time** for each trace. ### View Spans Table To inspect a span without leaving the results page, in the **Spans** table, click **>** on the left side of the span. The expanded span displays its **Span Name**, **Trace ID**, **Span ID**, **Parent Span ID**, **Service Name**, **Start Time**, **End Time**, **Duration**, and **Status**. In the **Filter attributes** section, use the search field to find an attribute. For structured values, click **Expand JSON** to inspect their contents. To investigate the span in the context of its complete trace, [switch to the Traces table](#view-traces-table), and then open the corresponding trace. To view a span’s details, in the top-right of the span, click **View details**. The trace details page displays the following sections: - **Trace timeline** shows the spans that make up the trace and their durations. Click a span to view its details. - **Span details** displays attributes for the selected span. Use the search field or the **All**, **Span**, and **Resource** tabs to narrow the displayed attributes. - **Associated logs** displays logs that share the same trace ID. Click **View all logs** to open the related logs in the **Logs** tab. To share the trace, click **Share trace** in the top-right corner. ### View Traces Table In the **Traces** table, click **>** on the left side of a trace to expand it. The expanded trace displays its duration, number of spans, participating services, status, and its trace timeline. Parent and child spans are organized hierarchically to show how the request moved between operations and services. In the **Trace timeline** section, click **>** next to a span to expand it. The expanded span displays its span name, trace ID, span ID, parent span ID when applicable, service name, start and end times, duration, status, attributes, and events. Use the search field in the **Attributes** subsection to find an attribute, and click **All**, **Span**, or **Resource** to filter the attributes displayed. To view a trace’s details, click **View details**. The trace details page displays the following sections: - **Trace timeline** shows the spans that make up the trace and their durations. Click a span to view its details. - **Span details** displays attributes for the selected span. Use the search field or the **All**, **Span**, and **Resource** tabs to narrow the displayed attributes. - **Associated logs** displays logs that share the same trace ID. Click **View all logs** to open the related logs in the **Logs** tab. To share the trace, click **Share trace** in the top-right corner.