---
title: "Set up Application Observability | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Instrument your applications with OpenTelemetry, activate Application Observability, and build the knowledge graph."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Set up Application Observability

Setting up Application Observability powered by the knowledge graph involves instrumenting your applications with OpenTelemetry, then activating the Applications dataset and building the knowledge graph.

## Prerequisites

- A Grafana Cloud account on a plan that supports the knowledge graph.
- At least one application instrumented with OpenTelemetry, sending OTLP data to Grafana Cloud.

## Steps

1. [Set up instrumentation](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/setup/instrumentation/): Instrument your applications with OpenTelemetry and configure Grafana Alloy to send data to Grafana Cloud.
2. [Activate Application Observability](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/setup/activate/): Enable the Applications dataset and build the knowledge graph.

## Uninstrumented services

Application Observability also detects external services that your applications communicate with, even when those services don’t send telemetry directly. For details, refer to [Uninstrumented services](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/setup/uninstrumented-services/).

## Next steps

After instrumentation and activation, navigate to **Observability > Application** in the Grafana menu to view your services in the [services catalog](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/services/).