Formatting links in Splunk documentation

Use a hyperlink to cross-reference other topics in Splunk documentation or to connect to other Splunk materials, such as Splunk Blogs posts, Splunk Answers, or Splunk Education videos. Before you include any links in your documentation, familiarize yourself with the guidance in Best practices for including links.

Go to the corresponding section for formatting details and examples of the type of link you want to include:

• Code repositories
• Documentation or parts of a manual
• Downloads
• Splexicon entries
• Splunk Answers
• Splunk Blogs
• Splunk Support Portal
• Splunk videos
• Third-party websites

Code repositories

Format links to code repositories as follows. See Links to third-party websites for more information about linking to outside resources.

Type of code repository	Include this information in the sentence	Example
Splunk-owned repository	Hyperlink the name of the Splunk-owned repository and name the site on which it's located.	To capture logs from your resources and applications, see the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector on GitHub. See Environment Variable Config Source in GitHub to copy the configuration YAML file.
Third-party repository	Include the name of the repository and spell out the full URL.	Install the fluent-plugin-systemd plugin for systemd journal log collection. See https://github.com/fluent-plugin-systemd/fluent-plugin-systemd/blob/master/README.md on Github.

Documentation or parts of a manual

Format links to Splunk documentation or parts of a manual as follows:

Part of Splunk documentation	Include this information in the sentence	Example
A Splunk product	Link to the documentation home page for that product.	For information about Splunk Cloud Platform, see the Splunk Cloud Platform documentation.
A manual	Link to the first topic of the manual. Use the manual name as the display name for the link. Italicize the manual name.	To learn about getting data into Splunk Enterprise, see Getting Data In.
A chapter in a manual	Link to the first topic in the chapter. Use the name of the chapter as the display name for the link.	To learn about configuring timestamps, see Configure timestamps.
A topic or subheading in a topic in the same manual	When linking to a topic or subheading in a topic that's in the same manual, use the full topic name. Don't include the name of the manual.	See Create a custom role in this topic. See Get Windows Data into Splunk Cloud Platform.
A topic or subheading in a topic in a different manual	When linking to a topic or subheading in a topic in a different manual that's in the same product, include the manual name in italics.	See About data models in the Knowledge Manager Manual. See Configure workload categories in the Splunk Enterprise Workload Management manual.
A topic or subheading in a topic in a different product	When linking to a topic or subheading in a topic in a manual that's in a different product, include the product name before the manual name. However, if the manual name refers to the product name, don't include the product name. Italicize the manual name.	See Modify event processing in the Splunk Cloud Platform Getting Data In manual. See About the Splunk App for CEF in the Deploy and Use Splunk App for CEF manual.
Splunk Developer Portal documentation	When linking to Splunk Developer Portal documentation from another documentation site, include the name of the site so that the reader knows they are going to a different page. When cross-linking within Splunk Developer Portal documentation, don't include the site name unless it's part of the page title.	See Develop apps and add-ons for Splunk Enterprise on the Splunk Developer Portal. For more information about setup pages, see Enable first-run configuration with setup pages. Find a summary of the latest updates and changes at What's new on the Splunk Developer Portal for Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise.
Splunk Observability documentation	When linking to Splunk Observability documentation from another documentation site, include the name of the site so that the reader knows they are going to a different page. When cross-linking within Splunk Observability documentation, don't include the site name unless it's part of the page title.	See Configure detectors and alerts in Splunk APM in the Splunk Observability documentation. To learn how to migrate to the Splunk OpenTelemetry Lambda Layer, see Migrate from SignalFx Lambda wrappers to Splunk OpenTelemetry Lambda Layer. Some features of Observability Cloud, such as related content, do not work with the Smart Agent. Learn more in Enable related content in Splunk Observability Cloud.
Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise manuals from app documentation	When the target of a link is different for Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise, display the links for both products in a bulleted list.	For Splunk Cloud Platform, see Using the alert actions manager in the Splunk Cloud Platform Alerting Manual. For Splunk Enterprise, see Using the alert actions manager in the Splunk Enterprise Alerting Manual.
A configuration file topic	If the name of the topic you're linking to is also a configuration file, don't use monospace in the display name of the link.	See limits.conf in the Admin Manual.

Downloads

Format links to these types of downloads as follows:

Type of download	Include this information in the sentence	Example
Splunkbase download	Use the name of the download as the display text for the link.	Download the Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Cloud Services from Splunkbase.
Download from the Splunk website	Use the name of the Splunk website download as the display text for the link.	Download the Splunk Universal Forwarder for your operating system from the Splunk website. Download Splunk Enterprise from Free Trials and Downloads on the Splunk website.
Download files	Use the file name or document name as the display name of the link.	Download the tutorialdata.zip file. Download the Machine Learning Toolkit Quick Reference Guide.

Splexicon entries

Link only to Splunk-specific terms that your audience might be unfamiliar with, and include the link at the first instance of the term you want to define. Bold the Splexicon term. See the following examples:

• You must configure the receiving port on the peer.
• The universal forwarder collects data from a data source or another forwarder and sends it to a different forwarder or a deployment.

Splunk Answers

Use the name of the page as the display text for the link. Mention that the link directs to Splunk Answers. See the following example:

See Questions related to All Apps and Add-ons on Splunk Answers.

Splunk Blogs

Use the name of the blog post as the display text for the link. Mention that the link directs to Splunk Blogs. See the following example:

See the Splunk Blogs post Data Sherlock: The Change of Perspective.

Splunk Support Portal

Link to the Support and Resources paged owned by Splunk Customer Success. See the following example:

To file a ticket on the Splunk Support Portal, see Support and Services.

If you have a support contract, file a case using the Splunk Support Portal. See Support and Services.

Splunk videos

Use the name of the video as the display text for the link. Provide a brief description of the video. See the following example:

Watch this Splunk Education video, Creating a Custom Search Command with the Python SDK, to see a high-level view of how custom search commands work, and build an example using the Splunk Python SDK.

Third-party websites

Splunk documentation sometimes has links to pages outside of the documentation or a Splunk website. See Best practices for linking to third-party websites for more information about essential or supplemental links.

Type of third-party link	Include this information in the sentence	Example
Essential third-party link	Spell out the full URL without any capital letters. Include "http://www" or "https://www" and remove the trailing slash at the end of the URL.	Install the fluent-plugin-systemd plugin for systemd journal log collection. See https://github.com/fluent-plugin-systemd/fluent-plugin-systemd/blob/master/README.md on GitHub. Create a Splunk On-Call webhook by following the steps in https://help.victorops.com/knowledge-base/rest-endpoint-integration-guide.
Supplemental third-party link	Avoid creating deep links to pages outside of Splunk sites. Consider ways you can direct users to information if you think they need assistance finding it, such as giving the reader a search term and a website name. Enclose the search term in quotation marks.	Search for "Query tables" on the Microsoft website. For details, see "Connecting to WMI Remotely Starting with Vista" on the Microsoft website.