# How to visualize trace timeline with otel traces

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-visualize-trace-timeline-with-otel-traces/375998
**Category:** APM
**Tags:** open-telemetry
**Created:** [March 17, 2025, 10:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-visualize-trace-timeline-with-otel-traces/375998 "2025-03-17T10:54:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![meghananagaraja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e7dd6/32.png) [@meghananagaraja](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/meghananagaraja)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2025, 10:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-visualize-trace-timeline-with-otel-traces/375998/1 "2025-03-17T10:54:25Z")

</div>

Dear All,

I used Otel for traces on my applications. My pipeline is app -\> otel collector-\> kafka -\> process by pyspark -\> ES index.  
Now how do i visualize trace timeline. i have added my index to data view but still apm asking me to add data. I am not using elastic agents.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/4/5/450becde69542f07f5a87461ff7f1eb5c9230a44.png)

How do I make apm recognise my traces. below is an example of traces i am sending to index. Please help.

```auto
      {
        "_index": "apm-traces",
        "_id": "1TKzo5UBhWrK4mnOWEn_",
        "_score": 1,
        "_source": {
          "trace": {
            "id": "d1f36cacca9467b3285abc23d5032157"
          },
          "transaction": {
            "id": "5e1ccb323f19bf05",
            "name": "GET /api/suggestions",
            "type": "request"
          },
          "span": {
            "id": "8db1805d84ecc4e3",
            "parent": {
              "id": "5e1ccb323f19bf05"
            },
            "name": "get_suggestions",
            "type": "app",
            "start": 1679035352819244,
            "end": 1679035353407279,
            "duration": 588034
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

```