View General Health

Honeycomb’s Home area provides a snapshot of your dataset. Home displays visualizations of some commonly-used queries and breakdowns, and an overview of your most recent traces and events. Both can be used as a jumping-off point to explore your data.

Use this view to become familiar with key system metrics and to check on the health of your systems.

Important

Data visualizations depend on Honeycomb dataset fields being mapped to source fields in your sent data. To learn how to map your data, visit Map Your Data.

Visualizations by Data Type

Home lets you visualize the data in your dataset in different ways: as trace-specific or log-specific visualizations, and as events in a table.

Trace Visualizations

The Traces view contains visualizations to help you better understand your trace data and to surface signals in the noise.

The visualizations displayed in Honeycomb's Home area on the Traces tab view. They include total spans, total errors, total exceptions, trace volume, span volume, errors, spans by type, p95 span duration, and top spans. Above all of the visualizations, there are two dropdowns that allow you to select the dataset and the time window.

Total Spans Displays the total number of spans within the selected time range.
Total Errors Displays the total number of spans that contain error within the selected time range.
Total Exceptions Displays the total number of spans that contain exception.message within the selected time range.
Trace Volume Displays the total number of traces over time grouped by name within the selected time range.
Span Volume Displays the total number of spans over time within the selected time range.
Errors Displays the total number of errors over time grouped by error within the selected time range.
Spans by Type Displays the total number of spans over time grouped by span type within the selected time range.
Top Spans Displays the total number of spans grouped by name within the selected time range in descending order.
P95 of Span Duration Displays the 95th duration percentile for spans over time within the selected time range.
Exception Volume by Type Displays the number of spans that contain exception.type grouped by exception.type within the selected time range.
Top Exceptions Displays the total number of spans that contain exception.message grouped by exception.message within the selected time range in descending order.

Note

Total Exceptions, Exception Volume by Type, and Top Exceptions charts depend on the availability of exception.type and exception.message fields. To learn how to record exception with OpenTelemetry, visit OpenTelemetry’s documentation on exception spans.

Logs Visualizations

The Logs view contains visualizations to help you better understand your log data and to surface signals in the noise.

The visualizations displayed in Honeycomb's Home area on the Logs view. They include total logs, total errors, total warnings, logs by severity, log volume, total events by severity, top messages, total errors by severity, and top errors. Chart and table visualizations have accompanying icons that let you toggle between chart and table view. The top messages table has an accompanying search bar that lets you filter by words in the message. Above all of the visualizations, there are two dropdowns that allow you to group or filter by fields. At the very top of the page, there are two dropdowns that allow you to select the dataset and the time range.

Total Logs: Displays the total number of logs received within the selected time range.
Total Errors: Displays the total number of logs that contain error or fatal severities within the selected time range.
Total Warnings: Displays the total number of logs with warn severities within the selected time range.
Logs by Severity: Displays the percent of logs by severity levels within the selected time range. Only standard severities, which include fatal, error, warn, info, trace, debug, and unspecified, are distinctly represented. Other, non-standard severities are bucketed into an Other group.

Tip

For more insights using BubbleUp, parse your severities into Honeycomb standard severities.
Log Volume: Displays a line graph of the log volume within the selected time range.
Total Events by Severity: Displays the volume of logs, grouped by severity, within the selected time range. Select the Show table () or Show chart () icon to switch between displaying this data as a table or line graph.

Note

Non-standard severities are also displayed in this chart.
Top Messages: Displays the most frequently occurring log messages within the selected time range. Select the Show table icon () or Show chart icon () to switch between displaying this data as a table or line graph. Enter a string in the search box to filter the body by that string.
Total Errors by Severity: Displays the volume of logs where severity is error or fatal, grouped by severity, for the selected time range. Select the Show table icon () or Show chart icon () to switch between displaying this data as a table or line graph.
Top Errors: Displays the most frequently occurring errors within the selected time range. Select the Show table icon () or Show chart icon () to switch between displaying this data as a table or line graph. Enter a string in the search box to filter the body by that string.

Grouping & Filtering

You can slice and dice visualizations in the Traces or Logs views by selecting options within the Group by and Filter by dropdowns.

Group By

Use the Group by dropdown to group all logs visualizations by additional fields.

To create a group:

From the Group by dropdown, select Customize Groups.
In the modal, for Property, select the field you want to be able to group your data by.
Enter a Display Name, and select Add Field.

Your named group will appear as an option in both the Group by and Filter by dropdowns.

To delete a group:

From the Group by dropdown, select Customize Groups.
In the modal, locate the Existing Fields section.
Locate the group that you want to delete, and select the Delete icon ().
Close the modal.

Your group will no longer appear as an option in the Group by and Filter by dropdowns.

Filter By

Use the Filter by dropdown to filter all logs visualizations by additional fields.

To create a filter:

From the Filter by dropdown, select Customize Filters.
In the modal, for Property, select the field you want to be able to filter your data by.
Enter a Display Name, and select Add Field.

Your named filter will appear as an option in the Filter by and Group by dropdowns.

To delete a filter:

From the Filter by dropdown, select Customize Filters.
In the modal, locate the Existing Fields section.
Locate the filter that you want to delete, and select its Delete icon ().
Close the modal.

Your filter will no longer appear as an option in the Filter by and Group by dropdowns.

To filter by multiple values:

From the Filter by dropdown, select a field you would like to filter by.
Select the values you would like to include for the field.
Repeat for any other fields you would like to filter by.
Select Apply Filters.

Your visualizations will update and will now be restricted by your applied filters.

Chart Actions

Use chart actions to dig deeper into the insights displayed on Honeycomb Home. Select any point on a line graph or any values in a table to open the action menu.

A visualization with its context menu expanded and its menu options displaying.

View Query

Each visualization lets you navigate directly to the Query Results page for the underlying query.

To explore a visualization’s underlying query:

Select a point on a chart or a cell in a table.
From the context menu, select View Query.

You will be redirected to the Overview view on the Query Results page for the underlying query.

Detect Anomalies

Visualizations that are grouped by fields will let you use BubbleUp to explore differences between groups:

On a grouped visualization, select a point on a chart or a cell in a table.
From the context menu, select Detect Anomalies (BubbleUp).

You will be redirected to the Anomalies view on the Query Results page for the underlying query.

Tip

If Detect Anomalies (BubbleUp) does not appear in the context menu, make sure that:

you are selecting from a grouped visualization
the visualization contains more than one group
you are not selecting the Other group in the “Logs by Severity” chart

Filter

Visualizations that are grouped by fields will let you filter directly by a severity or log message group.

To filter directly by a group:

Select a point on a chart or a cell in a table.
From the context menu, select Filter to this….

Your visualizations will update and will now be restricted by your applied filter.

View Events

Each visualization lets you navigate directly to selected events.

To explore events:

Select a point on a chart or a cell in a table.
From the context menu, select View Events.

You will be redirected to the Explore Data view on the Query Results page for the selected point.

Explore Data

The Explore Data view lets you explore all of the events in the dataset.

Note

You can access the Explore Data view through either Honeycomb Home or the Query Builder. In either case, the functionality remains the same–only the scope of the data changes. Accessing Explore Data through the Query Builder returns all events matching the entered query, whereas accessing it through Honeycomb Home returns all events contained in the selected dataset that occurred during the defined time window.

Troubleshooting

To explore common issues when working with Honeycomb Home visualizations, visit Common Issues with Visualization: Home.