# APM Trace Heatmap view

The Kloudfuse Trace Heatmap is a trace-data visualization tool that helps you to visually detect and identify deviations and outliers in latencies reported by APM data.

The Trace Heatmap plot is a grid of time-axis (horizontal) and duration-axis (vertical). Each cell of the Trace Heatmap captures the count of detected events (number of spans) within the time bucket and duration bucket. The visualization also uses deeper colors for higher span counts, and lighter colors for lower span counts to easily indicate the distribution of span latencies over a selected time period.

One of the many powerful features we developed for troubleshooting application performance issues is the [K-Lens](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-k-lens/).

Follow these steps to get to the **Traces: Heatmap** interface:

1. Click the **APM** tab, and then the **Trace Heatmap** option in the drop-down menu.

2. The **Trace Heatmap** interface appears.

## Using the APM Heatmap Interface

The **Traces: Heatmap** interface has the following information and affordances:

1. **[Filters](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-traces-filters/)** help you to determine what requires your immediate attention. For details, see [APM Traces Filters](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-traces-filters/).

To show filters, expand the filters: click the  (Show filters) icon in the top left corner of the page.

To hide the filters, click the  (Hide filters) icon in the top right corner of the filter panel.

2. **Search** for any tag on ingested spans.

3. **Overall interval**. The default is **Last 5 minutes**. Click the drop-down to use the time picker and select the appropriate time interval.

4. **Refresh display**: click  (Refresh) to update the display.

5. The **Heatmap** has a static specification for the **Query Builder**, the , **_Show heatmap duration (ns)_**.

6. Select the **Errors only** option to report only on traces that contain an error.

7. From the **Spans** drop-down, select if you plan to examine all spans, [service entry spans](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/glossary/#service-entry-span) only, or [trace root spans](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/glossary/#trace-root-span) only.

8. Click  to add a new query. See [Add Query](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-queries/#query-add).

9. Click  (Run) to construct the heatmap.

10. The **View type** selector enables you to specify the view by selecting one of the following modes:
    
    
    [List view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-traces/)
    
    
    [Time Series view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-time-series-view/)
    
    
    [Top List view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-top-list-view/)
    
    
    [Table view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-table-view/)
    
    
    [Pie Chart view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-pie-chart-view/)
    
    
    [Heatmap view](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-trace-heatmap-view/#)

This article discusses this view.

11. Click  (Export) icon to add the chart as a panel of a new or existing dashboard.

12. **Heatmap** of the selected metric that matches the filters and time interval criteria.

The plot is a grid of time-axis (horizontal) and duration-axis (vertical). Each cell represents the number detected events (number of spans) within the time bucket and duration bucket as a shade of the same color: deeper colors for higher span counts, and lighter colors for lower span counts.

The Trace Heatmap enables users to select a region on the Heatmap, with options to view spans and events, or start advanced analysis using [K-Lens](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.5.0/apm-k-lens/).