
= Root Cause and Impact Analysis
:description: Overview of root cause operation in {page-component-title} to identify underlying reduction keys of edges.

The root cause operation can quickly identify the underlying reduction keys of edges that contribute to an element's current operational status.
The impact analysis operation identifies all business services that are affected by a given element.
Both of these options are available in the topology map's context menu when you visualize business services.

== Example

The following example shows how to identify the root cause of a critical status on the hop service.
You can use the business service's context menu to investigate the root cause:

.View before performing root cause analysis
image::bsm/03_bsm-rca-action.png["{page-component-title} UI displaying the topology map, with a context menu overlaid. Root Cause Analysis is highlighted."]

The topology map focuses only on elements that affect the operational status of a selected business service.
Here, the Page Sequence Monitor--which lets the user log in--is down, and has set the business service to Critical status:

.View after performing root cause analysis
image::bsm/04_bsm-rca-results.png["{page-component-title} UI displaying the topology map, with two elements"]

You can also identify which business services from a specific edge are affected by selecting *Impact Analysis* from the context menu:

.View before performing impact analysis
image::bsm/05_bsm-ia-action.png["{page-component-title} UI displaying the topology map, with a context menu overlaid. Impact Analysis is highlighted."]

In this example, the business services for the login, shop, and payment workflows are affected if the HTTP service is unavailable:

.View after performing impact analysis
image::bsm/06_bsm-ia-results.png["{page-component-title} UI displaying the topology map, with five elements."]
