Service map

Overview

This topic explains how to use the service map in LaunchDarkly Observability.

The service map is an interactive visualization that shows the dependency relationships between your services. It derives this topology from your distributed traces. Parent-child span relationships are analyzed to determine which services call each other. Services appear as nodes in the graph, and directional edges represent call relationships between services. When two services call each other, the edge between them is bidirectional.

Understanding the service map

The service map is powered by distributed tracing data. To populate the map, your services must be instrumented to capture and send traces to LaunchDarkly. To learn more about setting up tracing instrumentation, read Traces.

The service map respects the time range selector on the dashboard. If you adjust the time range, the map updates to reflect service interactions within the new window.

Accessing the service map

To access the service map:

1. In the LaunchDarkly UI, navigate to Observability > Dashboards.
2. Select Service Map from the list of dashboards.

The service map visualization appears, showing your instrumented services and their dependencies.

Using the service map

The service map supports two viewing modes:

• Overview mode: Displays the full dependency graph for all instrumented services in the selected time range. Use this to get a high-level picture of how your services are connected.
• Focused mode: Zooms into a single service to highlight its direct connections and associated metrics. Use this to investigate a specific service’s dependencies.

You can switch between these modes using the interactive controls in the visualization. The specific interactions for toggling between modes may change as the feature evolves.