---
title: Workloads overview
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/new-relic-solutions/new-relic-one/workloads/workloads-overview
---

Workloads helps you organize, monitor, and troubleshoot your entire technology stack by grouping related entities into business-relevant units. Instead of tracking dozens of services, hosts, and applications separately, workloads give you a unified view of everything that powers a specific business function, team, or customer experience.

## Why use workloads? [#value-prop]

Modern applications span multiple services, hosts, databases, and third-party dependencies. Workloads solve the challenge of monitoring complex, distributed systems by:

-   **Simplifying observability**: View health and performance across your entire stack in one place
-   **Accelerating troubleshooting**: Quickly identify which components are causing issues
-   **Improving collaboration**: Share system status with teams without requiring deep technical knowledge
-   **Aligning to business outcomes**: Group entities by business function, customer journey, or team responsibility

![Workloads summary page showing health status and entities](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/workloads_overview.webp "Workloads summary page")

**[one.newrelic.com > All capabilities](https://one.newrelic.com/all-capabilities) > Workloads:** Workload provides a unified view of system health across all your monitored entities.

## What you can include in workloads [#what-included]

Both workload types can include:

-   Any New Relic-monitored entity (applications, services, hosts, databases, etc.)
-   [Dashboards](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/dashboards/new-relic-one-dashboards/get-started/introduction-new-relic-one-dashboards)
-   Other workloads (useful for complex team structures)

**Standard workloads** let you manually select these entities or define dynamic queries.

**Intelligent workloads** automatically include all entities participating in the selected transaction flow.

## Types of workloads [#types]

New Relic offers two types of workloads, each designed for different use cases:

### Standard workloads

You manually define which entities belong to a workload using queries, tags, or by selecting specific entities. Membership updates when your queries match new entities or you manually add/remove them.

#### Key capabilities

-   **Entity discovery**: Manual or tag-based queries
-   **Membership updates**: When queries match new entities or manual changes
-   **Setup complexity**: Simple - select entities or write queries
-   **Health status**: Configurable rules
-   **Alerting**: On workload status

    [Learn more about Standard workloads →](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/new-relic-solutions/new-relic-one/workloads/create-workloads)

### Intelligent workloads

> #### ⚠️ IMPORTANT
>
> This feature is currently in public preview.

Automatically discovers and tracks entities based on distributed traces from Transaction 360. Membership updates every 5 minutes as your system evolves, with AI insights and custom KPIs available.

#### Key capabilities

-   **Entity discovery**: Automatic via Transaction 360

-   **Membership updates**: Every 5 minutes automatically

-   **Setup complexity**: Requires Transaction 360 and distributed tracing

-   **AI insights**: Provides performance analysis and investigation for the workloads

-   **Custom KPIs**: Define and track custom KPIs based on your unique business needs

-   **Health status**: Configurable rules

-   **Alerting**: On workload status, KPIs, and Workload Golden Metrics

    #### Requirements

    To use Intelligent workloads, you need:

-   **Transaction 360**: Must be enabled with [distributed tracing](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/distributed-tracing/enable-configure/quick-start) in your New Relic account

-   **Trace data**: Recent distributed traces for the transactions you want to monitor

-   **Permissions**: Ability to create and manage workloads in your account

    #### Limitations

-   **AWS infrastructure only**: Not available in Azure environments; not available to FedRAMP customers due to AI processing requirements for AI insights

    #### When to use Intelligent workload

    Intelligent workloads are ideal for:

-   **Critical business transactions** with dynamic architectures

-   **Complex dependencies** where entity participation changes frequently

-   **Scenarios requiring business outcome tracking** with custom KPIs

-   **Teams needing AI-powered insights** for faster troubleshooting

    [Create Intelligent workloads →](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/new-relic-solutions/new-relic-one/workloads/create-intelligent-workload)

> #### 💡 TIP
>
> Customers use both workloads: Standard Workloads for infrastructure health and Intelligent Workloads to proactively monitor business-critical flows.

## Learn more [#learn-more]

-   [Workloads status configuration](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/new-relic-solutions/new-relic-one/workloads/workload-status-configuration)
-   [Workloads status and notifications](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/new-relic-solutions/new-relic-one/workloads/workload-status-views-notifications)
-   [Using workloads with NerdGraph API](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apis/nerdgraph/examples/nerdgraph-workloads-api-tutorials)
-   [Organize data with workloads tutorial](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/tutorial-peak-demand/organize-data-workloads)