Grafana's trace view provides an overview of a request as it travels through your system. The following sections provide detail on various elements of the trace view.
**Minimap** displays a condensed view of the trace timeline. Drag your mouse over the minimap to zoom into a smaller time range. This also updates the main timeline, making it easier to view shorter spans
When zoomed in, hovering over the minimap displays **Reset selection**, which resets the zoom.
A span is a unit of work within a trace that has a start time relative to the beginning of the trace, a duration and an operation name for the unit of work.
It usually has a reference to a parent span, unless it’s the first span, the root span, in a trace.
It frequently includes key/value attributes that are relevant to the span itself, for example the HTTP method used in the request, as well as other metadata such as the service name, sub-span events, or links to other spans.
For more information about spans and traces, refer to [Introduction to tracing](https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/introduction/) in the Tempo documentation.
**Span attributes** are key-value pairs that provide metadata about a specific span. They give context to the operation being performed, such as information about the request, response, or any relevant operational details. For example, if the span deals with calling another service via HTTP, an attribute could include the HTTP URL (maybe as the span attribute key `http.url`) and the HTTP status code returned (as the span attribute `http.status_code`).
**Resource attributes** are key-value pairs that describe the environment or entity that is producing the trace. They capture static information about the origin of traces, like the application name or the service version.
Span attributes are specific to a particular operation, while resource attributes are associated with the whole trace or the entire service emitting the spans. Refer to [Span and resource attributes](/docs/tempo/<TEMPO_VERSION>/operations/best-practices/#span-and-resource-attributes) for more detail.
#### Events
Events are log-like records attached to a span that represent an occurrence during its execution. They record notable moments or occurrences within the span's lifecycle, such as errors, warnings, or checkpoints. If an error occurs during an operation, an event can be added to the span to indicate what went wrong and when. Events include a timestamp, name, and key-value pairs attributes that provide additional context or details about the event.
Links show relationships between spans that are not in a direct parent-child relationship. They represent associations between spans that happen concurrently or across separate trace trees, linking traces that originated from separate sources but are logically connected, such as background job processing initiated from a web request. You might use links when a trace passes through an asynchronous queue or when correlating traces from different services.
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Refer to each individual data source's documentation for configuration instructions.
For Tempo, refer to [Trace to metrics configuration](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/<GRAFANA_VERSION>/datasources/tempo/configure-tempo-data-source/#trace-to-metrics).
For Tempo refer to [Trace to profiles](/docs/grafana/<GRAFANA_VERSION>/datasources/tempo/configure-tempo-data-source#trace-to-profiles) for configuration instructions.
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You can use [correlations](/docs/grafana/<GRAFANA_VERSION>/administration/correlations/) to define custom links that appear in the trace view based on trace and span information.
For Tempo, refer to [Trace correlations](/docs/grafana/<GRAFANA_VERSION>/datasources/tempo/traces-in-grafana/trace-correlations/) for configuration instructions.
{{<figuresrc="/media/docs/tempo/screenshot-grafana-trace-view-correlations.png"max-width="900px"class="docs-image--no-shadow"alt="Using correlations for a trace">}}
You can also expand the node graph for a displayed trace. If the data source supports it, this displays spans of the trace as nodes in the graph, or provides additional context, such as a service graph based on the current trace.
The node graph requires data to be returned from the data source in a specific format to display correctly. Refer to [Data API](/docs/grafana/<GRAFANA_VERSION>/panels-visualizations/visualizations/node-graph/#data-api), [Nodes data frame structure](/docs/grafana/latest/panels-visualizations/visualizations/node-graph/#nodes-data-frame-structure) and [Node graph data requirements](/docs/grafana/latest/panels-visualizations/visualizations/node-graph/#data-requirements) for additional information and configuration instructions.
