This topic explains how to view metric events your SDKs are sending to LaunchDarkly, and how to create metrics from those events.
An event occurs when an end user performs an action in your app, such as clicking a button, or when a system performs an action, such as processing a background job. Your SDKs can send these events to LaunchDarkly, where LaunchDarkly metrics aggregate and analyze them. To learn more, read Events.
Before you create a metric, you can view the events your SDKs are already sending to LaunchDarkly in the event explorer. The event explorer helps you identify which events your SDKs send and decide what event keys to use when creating metrics.
To view events from your SDKs, expand Data, then select Event explorer in the left navigation. The event list displays the 25 most recent event keys received in the selected environment during the last 90 days.

Each event entry displays the following information:
To copy an event key, click the three-dot overflow menu for an event and select Copy event key.
Click an event key to view more details about the event. A side panel opens with the options to view event details and preview recent events.
The Event details tab displays:
The Preview tab displays a list of events that were received over the last 90 days. Expand the timestamp of an event to view complete event details, such as information about the SDK, SDK version, event source, and application, if applicable.

Metric events that are stored in an external warehouse, such as BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift, or Snowflake, do not display a list of recent events in the Preview tab or the number of unique keys associated with each context kind for the event in the Event details tab.
To create a metric from an existing event:
After you create the metric, it appears in the Metrics list.
You can also create a new metric from an event by clicking Create new metric at the bottom of its event details panel.
All events that LaunchDarkly receives appear in the event explorer, whether or not they are included in a metric.
To include only a specific subset of events in a metric, apply filters after the metric is created. Metric event filtering does not affect what you see in the event explorer or event details panel. It only affects which events are counted when LaunchDarkly analyzes the metric’s impact.
To learn more, read Filtering custom metric events.