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@mergify mergify bot commented Oct 7, 2024

Closes https://github.com/elastic/obs-docs-projects/issues/260
Closes https://github.com/elastic/observability-docs/issues/817

Updates the information architecture of the APM section.

Preview: https://observability-docs_bk_4230.docs-preview.app.elstc.co/guide/en/observability/master/apm.html

Approach

User-facing changes:

  • Better integrate APM UI content with existing APM content. Recently we moved APM UI content from the Kibana guide to the Observability guide (Move APM UI documentation to observability-docs with history #3723). At the time we just lifted and shifted the content. This PR attempts to better integrate that content with existing APM content in the Observability guide.
  • Organizes content (roughly) chronologically. The subsections under APM are organized in roughly the order of the phases a user may go through – getting started, sending data to Elastic, viewing and interpreting that data, fine-tuning their implementation, and then upgrading when a new release comes out.
Screenshot 2024-09-06 at 10 17 29 AM
  • Eliminate unintuitive subsection titles. For example, the "Features” subsection.

Contributor-related changes:

  • Consistifies how pages are included. Aims to establishes a consistent pattern for page-to-file relationships, headings/leveloffsets, and includes:
    • One file should map to each page.
    • Every file should start with heading level 1. (Need to confirm this works as expected in the preview build -- it does work locally.)
    • Pages that are nested under a section in the table of contents are included at the bottom of the file associated with the parent page.
  • Consistently uses subdirectories. Instead of sometimes using subdirectories and sometimes using a flat directory section, it always uses a subdirectory within the apm directory.

New content

I wrote some new content on new “landing” pages for subsections within the APM section. These need closer review.

Goals

I had a few goals with these pages:

  • Tell a story. The first level under “Application performance monitoring (APM)” should tell the full, yet high-level, story of a user’s experience with APM with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
  • Establish context in each subsection. Some subsections are used to group together alternatives (pick this or that), while others are used to group together related tasks/concepts.
    • In the former, the landing page should aim to assist in decision making – the user should be able to compare/contrast alternatives at a high level to reduce the need to read through the whole doc for each alternative.
    • In the latter, some subsections have pages with content that builds throughout the subsection, while others are plain old siblings that can be read in any order. The landing page for each subsection establishes the relationship between its children pages.
    • Note: We know users usually don’t read docs from the top of the toc to the bottom in order. Instead the intent is to establish the context in case a user lands on a page from search results, and is not sure the page is right for them – they have the option of backing up to see some context.

Pages to be reviewed

Here are the pages with new content that need review:

  • Data model
    Describes the relationship between event types in both the text and a diagram.
  • Collect application data
    Presents alternative methods for collecting data and helps the user decide which page(s) might be relevant to them to streamline their experience.
    • APM agents
      Lists available agents and links to the docs. Mentions that for the most part, they should get information from the agent docs, but there are a couple resources in the Observability guide with content that applies to multiple agents and/or the APM UI.
  • View and analyze data
    Establishes that they might want to progress through this content in order as they get more familiar with the APM UI.
  • Act on data
  • Use APM securely
  • APM APIs

Review checklist

Rough checklist for now!

* move source files

* update get started section

* update data model section

* create collect application data section

* create view and analyze data section

* create act on data section

* update manage storage section

* update configure section

* create use apm securely section

* update advanced setup section

* update monitor apm server section

* update troubleshooting section

* update api section

* clean up

* update index files

* fix apm guide redirects

* fix more apm guide redirects

* fix more apm guide redirects

* adjust some headings

* address feedback on data types section

* address feedback on collect data section

* address feedback on configure section

* address feedback on get started section

* address feedback on act on data section

* fix apm guide redirect

* fix diagrams

* clean up some to dos

* clean up

* address feedback from @lahsivjar

(cherry picked from commit 265db9a)
@mergify mergify bot requested a review from a team as a code owner October 7, 2024 13:11
@mergify mergify bot added the backport label Oct 7, 2024
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github-actions bot commented Oct 7, 2024

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@colleenmcginnis colleenmcginnis enabled auto-merge (squash) October 7, 2024 18:13
@colleenmcginnis colleenmcginnis merged commit 7f6d0b0 into 8.x Oct 7, 2024
8 checks passed
@colleenmcginnis colleenmcginnis deleted the mergify/bp/8.x/pr-4230 branch October 7, 2024 18:14
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