Cisco Cloud Observability enables you to observe Span entity data in greater detail. A Span represents a unit of operation or work. Spans are the building blocks of Traces because every span provides specific, additional details about a transaction. All spans can be seen throughout all services for a Tenant and you can review all span information per trace. This page introduces and describes spans.

Spans List View

From the Observe page, click any entity detail such as Services, Service Instances, or Business Transactions. Based on the entity type selected, from the list view, select a specific entity by clicking on the row or if you are on the flow view (only on the Services entity view), single click on a service node. Related Spans then appears on the Properties panel.

Alternately, from Explore, click Spans.

From the Spans list view, you can sort by Spans, Duration, Start Time, or Errors by clicking the appropriate heading. Clicking on a span displays the span properties, attributes, and tags in the right Properties panel. To customize the headings you want displayed:

  1. Click. The customizable headings includes span attributes and the following options:
    1. Span ID
    2. Span Name
    3. Service
    4. Span Kind
    5. Duration (Ms)
    6. Start Time
    7. Status
  2. Type in the search bar or select the column names that you want displayed.
  3. Once you have your custom columns selected, click Apply.

AWS Lambda and Spans

You can can monitor your AWS Lambda layers regarding related spans. See Instrument AWS Lambda Using OpenTelemetry Layers.

Filter Spans

There are three options to filter by:

  • Visual: Incorporates quick filters options that includes Span ID, Span Name, Service, Span Kind and Status.
  • Classic: Includes entering a query and having the compound filter suggestion consider the previous filter's results.
  • Natural Language: Involves typing a filter statement using human language.

Visual Filter

To filter spans with the Visual option:

  1. Click anywhere on the individual filter bar for a specific filter (Span ID, Span Name, Service, Span Kind or Status).
  2. Type or select a value.
  3. Click Apply.

Alternately, with Visual filtering, you can:

  1. Click All Fields.
  2. Click anywhere on the individual filter bar for a specific filter (Span ID, Span Name, Service, Span Kind or Status).
  3. Type or select a value.
  4. Drag the Duration slider to the appropriate value. 
  5. Click Apply. 

Classic Filter

To filter spans with the Classic option:

  1. Click the Add filters statement bar.
  2. Select any entity attribute (duration, name, numErrors, numSpans, source, and so on).
    For Spans and Traces you can also perform entity-based filtering such as filter spans by a service name or Business Transaction name.
  3. Select an operator and enter a value.
    You can add more than one filter by adding && between the filter statements.
  4. Once you complete your filter statement, click Apply.
    To remove filters, highlight the filter statement and delete or clear the field.

You can also select previously used filters by clicking on the Recent Filters dropdown menu.

Autocomplete Feature 

The autocomplete feature works for all Traces, Spans, and topology fields. For most fields, once you select the operator, the top 10 values ordered by count, will display. As you start typing a value, another set of 10 values will be fetched, ordered by count, but filtered using regex based on your input.

Certain fields do not support regex filtering, such as "type" or fields with integer values like attributes(http.port), attributes(db.port), numErrors, and so on. These fields does not have the autocomplete functionality and you must manually enter the values.

Fields that are related to Traces or Spans displays the count value, while topology fields does not display the count value and they are not ordered by count.

To select a different time range to apply to your displayed data, click TimeRange Icon. Select from Default or Recently Used time ranges, or create a Custom time range to broaden or narrow down the data displayed.

Natural Language Filter 

To filter spans with the Natural Language option:

  1. Click Natural Language.
  2. Enter a query using Natural Language.
    Suggestions will populate, for example, "show critical service instances." Click Regenerate to populate additional suggestions. 
  3. Click Apply. 

Spans are only available for the last 14 days.