Charts in Dash0 are powered by PromQL queries that aggregate spans, logs, web events, or metrics into a visualization. When you spot something unusual — say, a sudden spike in a logs chart — the next question is which records actually caused this?

Without drilldown, answering that question is a manual workflow:

Open the Logs Explorer.
Recreate every filter from the chart's PromQL query in the explorer's native syntax.
Narrow the time range to the spike window.

Each step is a small translation tax that compounds across investigations.

Drilldown removes this tax by letting you jump from any chart powered by a PromQL query straight into the underlying signal explorer with filters and time scope already applied. This works for charts querying logs, spans, or web events through Dash0's synthetic metrics, as well as charts querying any other metric directly. Filters from the PromQL expression and the attributes of the clicked series are translated into the destination explorer's filter syntax automatically.

Info

Dash0 applies as many filters as possible without creating false negatives, but some false positives are possible for complex PromQL expressions. See Drilldown: Filter Translation for more information.

Understand the Targets

Each drilldown action takes you to one of four targets, depending on what the chart's query covers:

Spans — for queries on the span-based synthetic metrics dash0.spans, dash0.spans.duration, or dash0.span.red.
Logs — for queries on the log-based synthetic metric dash0.logs.
Web Events — for queries on the web event-based synthetic metrics dash0.web.events, dash0.web.vitals.inp, dash0.web.vitals.lcp, dash0.web.vitals.cls, dash0.web.sessions and more; for the full list, refer to Understand Synthetic Metrics.
Metrics — for queries on dash0.metrics.datapoints as well as any non-synthetic metric. Lists each metric used by the chart and links to the Metric Explorer with the metric pre-selected and any extracted filters applied.

For spans, logs, and web events, drilldown offers two modes: Explore for reading the underlying records, and Triage for surfacing what differentiates them. See Drilldown: Explore vs. Triage for guidance on choosing between them and per-signal Triage documentation. Triage is not available for metrics.

Drill Down from a Time-Series Chart

To drill down from a time-series chart, click and drag on the chart to select a time range. The drilldown action bar appears above the selection. The contents of the action bar depend on how many series the chart contains.

Single Series

When the chart returns a single series, the action bar shows Explore and Triage inline. Click either to navigate to the destination explorer for that series.

When the chart's query targets multiple signals at once, for example a query that surfaces both spans and a related metric, the action bar collapses into an Explore dropdown. Each signal in the dropdown is a separate drilldown with its own destination explorer and filter set: choosing Spans opens the Spans Explorer with the chart's span-related filters applied, choosing Logs opens the Logs Explorer with the chart's log-related filters, and so on. Each signal group (Spans, Logs, Web Events) shows a live count of matching records over the selected time range.

Multiple Series

When the chart returns more than one series, the action bar shows a single Explore button. Clicking it opens a dialog that lets you pick a series first. Each row is its own drilldown, with a destination filter set built from that row's labels combined with the chart's PromQL filters, so different rows produce different views of the underlying records. The first row is selected by default, so pressing Enter immediately drills into the first series and its first available signal.

The dialog contains:

A search field to filter the series list by name.
A chart preview of the source chart, so you keep visual context while picking.
A table of series, one row per series. Each row shows the count of matching spans, logs, and web events for the selected time range. The active row is reflected in the chart preview by highlighting its time series.
A signal column per drilldown target. Each (series × signal) cell is an independent drilldown; clicking a count opens the corresponding explorer scoped to both that series' labels and that signal's filters. If the chart also produces metric drilldowns, expanding a row reveals the per-metric links.

You can navigate the dialog entirely from the keyboard:

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Move between series
Enter	Open Explore for the active series and the first available signal
Esc	Close the dialog

The Selected Range Becomes the Focused Time Range

Because the selection is the trigger, the selected range is always carried into the destination. How it lands depends on the target:

Spans, Logs, and Web Events Explorer — The global time range is left untouched, exactly as configured in the time picker, and the selected range is set as the focused time range — a highlighted band inside the global range that scopes attention to that window.
Metric Explorer — The selected range becomes the global time range in the destination, since the Metric Explorer does not have a separate focused range concept.

For spans, logs, and web events, this makes selecting a time range the most precise way to investigate a specific spike or dip without losing the surrounding context.

Tip

Time-range selection combines naturally with Triage: drag across the spike of interest, click Triage, and the comparative analysis runs against the spike's time window inside the global range. See Analyze Spans with Triage.

Drill Down from a Pie, Gauge, or Stat Segment

For chart types where the visual unit is a clickable shape — pie segments, gauge arcs, stat values, tree map cells — click the shape to open a drilldown popover anchored to the cursor.

Pie Chart

Gauge Chart

Stat Chart

Tree Map

The popover shows the same Explore + Triage actions as the time-series action bar. Press ESC, click outside, or scroll the page to dismiss it.

When a segment's query covers multiple drilldown targets, the popover shows a dropdown with per-signal counts, identical to the dropdown described above.

These chart types do not support time-range selection, so only the global time range is carried into the destination explorer.

Custom Drilldown Destinations

Some charts override the default drilldown behavior with a destination tailored to the surrounding context. The Home dashboard is the most prominent example:

The Failed Checks panel routes to the Failed Checks page rather than to a metric explorer.
Other Home charts (Spans, Logs, Web Events panels) route to their corresponding signal explorer scoped only to the selected time range. The Spans destination opens with the RED visualization renderer.

In these custom flows, filters from the chart query are not carried into the destination — only the selected time range is preserved as the focused time range. The Home panels show aggregate health, and the user is expected to apply their own filters in the destination explorer.

Drill Down from Charts