Instana user interface navigation

The header bar provides access to global functions and user settings:

• IBM Instana branding - Click the branding to return to the home page.
• Share button - Click to share the current page with team members through email or URL.
• Help menu - Click to access documentation, support resources, and product information.
• Profile menu - Click to manage your user profile, preferences, and log out.

The time range selector controls the time window for displayed data:

• Preset ranges - Click to select common time ranges such as Last hour or Last 24 hours.
• Custom date and time - Click to select specific start and end times for analysis.
• Live mode - Click the Live button to toggle real-time data streaming.

The time range applies globally across all views, providing consistent temporal context as you navigate through different sections.

The navigation panel provides hierarchical access to all major Instana features. The panel automatically collapses to maximize screen space for data visualization.

The Home page serves as your starting point and provides:

• Personalized welcome - Greeting with your name and current date and time context.
• What's new - Highlights of new features and capabilities with links to learn more or explore.
• Quick actions - Direct links to common tasks such as:
  • Install agents or collectors
  • Add users
  • Access IBM Documentation
  • View release notes
  • Read community blogs
• Dashboard snapshots - Quick-access cards that display key metrics from your primary dashboards, including websites, applications, infrastructure, synthetic monitoring, platforms, incidents, events, business processes, and custom dashboards. Each card provides at-a-glance data and links directly to the full dashboard view.
  • Favorite resources - Click the heart icon in the resource tables on the Home page to mark specific resources as favorites. Favorite resources appear in their respective tables for quick access. This favorite feature is only available on the Home page tables and helps you prioritize the resources that you monitor most frequently.

The Home page section can be collapsed by using the Hide what's new toggle to maximize space for resource data.

The primary monitoring sections include:

Websites & mobile apps

Monitor end-user experience for web applications and mobile apps, including page load times, user sessions, and JavaScript errors.

Business processes

Monitor business-critical workflows and transactions across your application stack.

Applications

Monitor application performance for services, endpoints, traces, and application perspectives.

Gen AI observability

Monitor generative AI applications and models.

Platforms

Monitor platform-specific infrastructure with expandable submenu for:

• Cloud Foundry
• IBM Power HMC
• IBM Z HMC
• OpenStack
• Kubernetes
• Linux KVM Hypervisor
• Nutanix
• SAP
• vSphere
• XenServer
• Windows Hypervisor

Infrastructure

Monitor infrastructure including hosts, containers, and physical or virtual resources.

Custom dashboards

Create and manage custom dashboards with widgets for metrics, logs, and topology.

Logs

Manage, search, and analyze centralized logs.

Synthetic monitoring

Monitor proactively through synthetic tests and health checks.

Analytics

Perform advanced analytics, unbounded queries, and data exploration.

Vulnerabilities

Detect and manage security vulnerabilities.

Events

View and manage incidents, issues, and changes. A badge indicator shows the count of active events that require attention.

Automation

Configure automated actions and remediation workflows.

Service levels

Define and track service level objectives (SLOs) and service level indicators (SLIs).

Administrative and configuration sections include:

Settings

Configuration information: Global settings (events, alerts, integrations, logging), User settings (personal preferences, UI customization), and Security & access (users, teams, roles, API tokens, authentication).

AI gateway

Manage LLM (large language model) gateways for AI-powered capabilities such as AI assistant, script generation, incident summarization, Kubernetes assistant, manual action generation, SLO assistant, and incident investigation.

Agents & collectors

Monitor and manage data collection: Instana agents (view reporting status, agent details, install/update/reset agents) and OpenTelemetry Collectors (view collector details, versions, and status).

Account & billing

Manage account and billing: Usage (data usage, consumption overview, add-ons, and data granularity by category: traces, infrastructure, synthetic tests, EUM mobile, EUM website), Subscriptions (view and manage subscriptions), Activation & adoption (user summary and weekly active users), Technologies reporting (technology usage statistics), and Account information (billing address details).

Internal

Internal system information and diagnostics for administrators.

More

Resources with expandable submenu for:

• Release notes
• Documentation
• Support
• About Instana

The main content area displays the selected view and adapts based on the navigation choice. Common elements include:

• Page title - Identifies the current view or resource.
• Action buttons - Click buttons such as Add website or Create dashboard to perform context-specific actions.
• Search and filters - Type in search fields and select filter controls to refine displayed data.
• Data tables - Tabular views with sortable columns and interactive rows.
• Visualizations - Charts, graphs, and topology maps that show real-time and historical data.

Many Instana views present data in interactive tables. Common features include:

• Search - Type in the search field to filter table contents.
• Column sorting - Click column headers to sort data.
• Health indicators - Visual status icons: green checkmark for good health, red circle for critical, yellow warning for degraded.
• Sparkline charts - Inline trend visualizations that show metric patterns over time.
• Clickable rows - Click any row to drill down into detailed views.
• Action buttons - Click buttons such as Add website to perform context-specific actions.

For example, the Websites table displays:

• Name - Website identifier with clickable link to details.
• Page views - Traffic volume with sparkline trend.
• OnLoad times - Performance metrics with sparkline trend.
• Health - Overall status indicator.

Instana uses consistent navigation patterns throughout the interface:

When you explore the detailed views, breadcrumb trails appear in the content area that help you to navigate back through the hierarchy.

Throughout the interface, related resources are linked. For example:

• Click a service name to navigate to the service details.
• Click a hostname to show infrastructure details.
• Click an incident to open the incident investigation view.

These contextual links maintain your current time range and filters, providing seamless navigation across related data.

Use the following tips to navigate the Instana UI more efficiently.

• Use keyboard shortcuts - Press ? to view available keyboard shortcuts.
• Bookmark frequently used views - Use the browser bookmark feature or Instana favorite functionality.
• Use the time selector - Click the time selector to quickly switch between live mode and historical analysis.
• Use search and filters - Type in search fields and click filters to narrow down large datasets and focus on relevant information.
• Follow the data flow - Click contextual links to trace issues from symptoms to root causes.
• Check the Events badge - The notification count on the Events menu item alerts you to active incidents.