---
title: "Activate Application Observability | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Activate the Applications dataset and build the knowledge graph to start monitoring your services."
---

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

# Activate Application Observability

Activating Application Observability connects your application telemetry to the knowledge graph, which discovers your services and generates performance insights automatically.

## Before you begin

- You must have administrator permissions on your Grafana Cloud stack.
- Your applications must be sending OpenTelemetry data to Grafana Cloud.

## Activate the Applications dataset

1. In Grafana, navigate to **Observability**.
   
   The knowledge graph onboarding page displays with three dataset options: Kubernetes, Applications, and Hosts.
2. Click **Applications**.
3. In the **Activate Application Observability** dialog box, review the details:
   
   - Application Observability provides deep visibility using OpenTelemetry-native instrumentation.
   - Activation enables metric generation from traces.
   - Billing is based on [host hours](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/pricing/).
4. Click **Activate**.
   
   The **Connect knowledge graph** configuration page displays. Application Observability shows as **Activated**.

## Build the knowledge graph

After activating the Applications dataset, build the knowledge graph to start discovering services.

1. On the **Connect knowledge graph** page, verify that Application Observability shows a status of **Activated**.
2. Optionally, activate additional datasets (Kubernetes Monitoring, Host Monitoring, cloud providers) to enrich the knowledge graph with infrastructure context.
3. Click **Build knowledge graph**.
   
   The status changes to **Knowledge graph built** and Application Observability shows as **Configured**.

After building, additional configuration tabs become available: Traces metrics generation, KPI display options, Logs, Traces, Profiles, Display, and RED mapping. For configuration details, refer to [Configure Application Observability](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/configure/).

## Next steps

- Navigate to **Observability > Application** to view your [services catalog](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/services/).
- [Configure Application Observability](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/application-observability-kg/configure/) to customize metrics generation, display options, and telemetry correlation.