---
title: "Investigation walkthrough | Grafana documentation"
description: "A hands-on walkthrough of investigating errors using Traces Drilldown on play.grafana.org."
---

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

# Investigation walkthrough

Follow this step-by-step walkthrough to investigate errors using Grafana Traces Drilldown on [play.grafana.org](https://play.grafana.org). This tutorial guides you through the basic workflow so you can learn by doing.

Give it a try using Grafana Play

With Grafana Play, you can explore and see how it works, learning from practical examples to accelerate your development. This feature can be seen on [the Grafana Play site](https://play.grafana.org/a/grafana-exploretraces-app/explore).

[Try it](https://play.grafana.org/a/grafana-exploretraces-app/explore)

Because `play.grafana.org` is a public demo, data changes over time and may reset. If you don’t see data, try refreshing and ensure the time range and data source are correct.

## Scenario

You’ve noticed errors in your application and want to investigate which requests are failing and why.

### Open Traces Drilldown

1. Open [play.grafana.org](https://play.grafana.org).
2. In the main menu, select **Drilldown** > **Traces**.
3. Traces Drilldown opens with a tracing data source selected.

### Choose span data

By default, Traces Drilldown shows **Root spans** (one span per trace) for accurate, service-level insight. For deeper error investigations, start with **Root spans**, then switch to **All spans** to include downstream or internal errors in child spans. Refer to [Choose root or full span data](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/investigate/choose-span-data) for more information.

### Select Errors metric

1. In the **Select metric type** section, you’ll see three options:
   
   - **Rate**: Overall request/span rate
   - **Errors**: Failed requests/spans
   - **Duration**: Latency distribution (heatmap)
2. Click **Errors** to focus on failed requests.
3. The view updates to show error-specific tabs: **Breakdown**, **Root cause errors**, **Comparison**, **Exceptions**, and **Errored traces**.

### View traces with errors

1. Click the **Errored traces** tab to see individual traces with errors.
2. Use the **Search** field to filter the table by any visible column (for example service name, trace name, or status).
3. The table shows traces with columns:
   
   - **Start time**: When the request occurred
   - **Status**: Shows `error` for all traces in this view
   - **Trace Service**: The service that handled the request (for example, `frontend`)
   - **Trace Name**: The operation name (for example, `GET /api/quotes`, `POST /api/pizza`)

### Examine a specific trace

A trace is a tree of spans that represents a single request as it moves through your services. Each span captures one operation, and child spans nest inside their parent to show the call chain. By understanding the trace structure, you can identify the root cause of errors.

1. Click **Open in new tab** on a trace row to view the full trace details.
2. The trace view opens in Explore showing:
   
   - **Trace header**: Service name, HTTP method, and status code (for example, `502`)
   - **Trace ID**: The unique identifier for this request
   - **Duration**: Total time for the request (for example, `250.41ms`)
   - **Overview timeline**: Visual representation of all spans with error spans highlighted
3. The **span timeline** shows the sequence of operations:
   
   - Parent spans (for example, `frontend GET /api/quotes`)
   - Child spans (for example, `HTTP GET`)
   - Error spans are highlighted in red/orange.
4. Use the **Filters** to focus on:
   
   - **Critical path**: The slowest path through the trace
   - **Errors**: Only spans with errors
   - **High latency**: Slow spans

### Explore error patterns with breakdown

1. Go back to the **Breakdown** tab to see error patterns.
2. The **Attributes** panel shows available dimensions:
   
   - `resource.service.name`: Which services have errors
   - `span.name`: Which operations are failing
   - `span.status`: Error status codes
   - `span.http.status_code`: HTTP response codes
3. Click on an attribute to break down errors by that dimension.

### What you learned

By following this walkthrough, you learned how to:

- Navigate Traces Drilldown and select the **Errors** metric.
- View traces with errors in a table format.
- Examine individual trace details.
- Use **Breakdown** to identify error patterns.

For more advanced investigation techniques like using the **Comparison** tab and **Inspect** feature, refer to the [Example: Investigate source of errors](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/get-started/#example-investigate-source-of-errors) section.

## Next steps

Now that you’ve completed the basic walkthrough:

- [Determine your use case](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/determine-use-case) to choose the right investigation approach.
- [Choose a RED metric](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/investigate/choose-red-metric) to guide what you analyze next.
- [Add filters](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/investigate/add-filters) to refine the scope of your investigation.
- [Analyze tracing data](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/investigate/analyze-tracing-data) with Breakdown, Comparison, and Root cause views.
- [Choose root or full span data](/docs/grafana-cloud/visualizations/simplified-exploration/traces/investigate/choose-span-data) depending on your use case.

### Use traces with other telemetry signals

Do you have data from other telemetry signals?

- Refer to [Use signals together](/docs/grafana-cloud/telemetry-signals/use-signals-together/) to learn about using metrics with other telemetry data and why correlation matters.
- Refer to [Telemetry signal workflows](/docs/grafana-cloud/telemetry-signals/workflows/) to explore workflows across all the Drilldown apps.