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Last reviewed: May 30, 2024

Topic types

Grafana Labs documentation uses different topic types: concept, task, reference, and tutorial. When you write content, you should use one of these topic types.

Depending on the needs of a particular product area, select a topic type from the following table to learn about each.

Concept
Provides an overview and background information. Answers the question “What is it?”.
Task
Provides numbered steps that describe how to achieve an outcome. Answers the question “How do I?”.
Reference
Provides users with the information they might need to refer to during a task. Answers the question “What details do I need to accomplish this task?”.
Tutorial
Provides procedures that users can safely reproduce and learn from. Answers the question: “Can you teach me to …?”
Section
Provides a landing page for users to find content.

For your convenience, there are topic templates.

Tip

You can create a topic from its template with the topic/<TYPE> GNU Make target.

For example, to create a task topic at the path sources/task.md:

console 
make topic/task TOPIC_PATH=sources/task.md

Types include:

  • Concept: make topic/concept
  • Reference: make topic/reference
  • Task: make topic/task
  • Multiple tasks: make topic/multiple-tasks
  • Section: make topic/section
  • Visualization: make topic/visualization

Templates for standardized topics

In addition to the primary topic types, there are also templates for specific topic types to ensure that pages documenting the same subject matter have a standard format.

These templates are in the same directory as the topic type templates.

TypeDescription
VisualizationDescribes a visualization type. May include conceptual, task, and reference content.