Contributing

Contributing

Welcome 👋

Contributions are always welcome. Before contributing please read the code of conduct and search the issue tracker; your issue may have already been discussed or fixed in main. To contribute, fork this repository, commit your changes, and send a Pull Request.

Note that our code of conduct applies to all platforms and venues related to this project; please follow it in all your interactions with the project and its participants.

Quickstarts contributor guidelines

Review our comprehensive Developer Guide to get starting building your quickstart!

We encourage all contributors to actively engage in the creation and maintenance of quickstarts. Whether you work at New Relic or use New Relic as a customer, the community is open to your expertise!

Step 1: Review the quickstart definitions section and the quickstart Template Config for a definition of how to create a quickstart.
Step 2: Review the documentation for structure and limits you need to consider.
Step 3: Create your quickstart!
Step 4: Submit a PR!
Step 5: Resolve feedback from code reviews.
Step 6: After approval, merge your PR.

Quickstart PR review workflow

When you submit a PR for a new our existing quickstart the follow workflow is executed.

Step 1: A new PR is added the To do column of the NR1 Community Quickstarts project board
Step 2: A repo maintainer will review the PR and provided feedback. The PR will move to the In progress column.
Step 3: Once a review is complete the PR will move to In review column and in-review label will be applied.
Step 4: When all review feedback is resolved the PR will be merged and moved to the Done column and a released label will be applied.

Pull requests

Provide a short description of the changes and screenshots of any visual changes.
Complete the pre-merge checklist provided in the PR template.
Ensure that all status checks are passing.
You may merge the Pull Request in once you have the sign-off of one other developer, or if you do not have permission to do that, you may request the reviewer to merge it for you.
Once your PR is merged, changes should be reflected both in the Public Catalog and in New Relic One I/O within 4 hours

Contributor license agreement

Keep in mind that when you submit your Pull Request, you'll need to sign the CLA via the click-through using CLA-Assistant. If you'd like to execute our corporate CLA, or if you have any questions, please drop us an email at opensource@newrelic.com.

For more information about CLAs, please check out Alex Russell's excellent post, "Why Do I Need to Sign This?".

Quickstart definitions

Quickstarts

Quickstarts are higher level "bundles" of dashboards and alerts (components), plus the instrumentation required to power them. Some examples of things that should be quickstarts are Ruby on Rails, the LAMP stack, or WordPress.

They are defined under the quickstarts/ directory and can be nested under organizational directories such as aws, logging, or kubernetes. Each quickstart has a config.yml file that defines metadata, components, and data sources.

# quickstarts/example-category/example-quickstart/config.yml

# This is automatically created by the system, this field should not be included by the author when creating a new quickstart.
id: 00000-0000-0000-0000000

slug: example-quickstart

# Used as the display name for the quickstart
title: Example quickstart

description: |
  ## Long form description
  * with
  * markdown
  * support

summary: |
  Short form summary of the quickstart. Limited to one or two sentences, and does not support markdown.

# Possible values: New Relic | Verified | Community
# Please consult with pull request reviewers if you think your quickstart should have a support level other than "Community"
level: Community

authors:
  - Author One
  - Other Author

# These keywords can be mapped to category terms
# which help to categorize quickstarts.
# To have your quickstart appear under a certain category,
# these keywords must include a matching category term,
# see link in the keywords row of the table below.
keywords:
  - list
  - of
  - searchable
  - strings

# Relevant documentation for this quickstart
documentation:
  - name: Installation docs
    url: docs.newrelic.com
    description: Short description of the documentation link

# An icon or logo for the quickstart
icon: icon.svg

# References to dashboards by file path, the first entry references a dashboard located at `dashboards/example-dashboard`
# For more information on dashboard definitions, see the section below.
dashboards:
  - example-dashboard
  - another-example-dashboard

# References to alert policies by file path, the first entry references an alert policy located at `alerts-policies/example-alert-policy`
# For more information on alert policy definitions, see the section below.
alertPolicies:
  - example-alert-policy
  - another-example-alert-policy

# References to data sources by their id. These can be either CORE or a COMMUNITY data source.
# For more information on data source definitions, see the section below.
dataSourceIds:
  - example-data-source

Note: For a quickstart to be "installable" through New Relic, it must have a data source. The data source ids can either refer

An example quickstart directory looks like this:

# in quickstarts/example directory
# Note: a nested directory is also valid, quickstarts/example/getting-started
config.yml
icon.png

Fields

field	required?	default	description
id	yes		A UUID for the quickstart, this is generated by the system and should not be provided by the contributor
slug	no	The title in lowercase with spaces and special characters removed	Used to reference the quickstart in URLs, should not be changed after creation
title	yes		Used as the display name for the quickstart
description	yes		The long form description of the quickstart, has support for markdown syntax
summary	yes		The short form description of the quickstart, should be under 250 characters
level	no	`Community`	The support level for the quickstart, possible values are `New Relic`, `Verified`, and `Community`
authors	yes		A list of authors for the quickstart
keywords	no		A list of terms for searching within the catalogue. To have your quickstart listed in a certain category, you must include a keyword matching a category term from this query
documentation	no		A list of related documentation for the quickstart
icon	no	An image generated using the initials of the quickstart title	Used to denote the quickstart within the catalogue
dashboards	no		A list of dashboards to include in this quickstart
alertPolicies	no		A list of alert policies to include in this quickstart
dataSourceIds	no		A list of data sources ids.

Style tips

Maintain a strong active voice. Lead sentences with verbs.
- Avoid "Allows you to monitor your uptime"
Avoid being too formal. Avoid words like thus and lastly, and feel free to use we and our.
In general, we should only lightly touch on what a given technology does. The user is already using Node, so we don't need to sell them on it exactly. What we need to focus on is the challenges of monitoring that technology and then sell on that.

Check out our doc team's voice and tone guidelines.

Quickstart description prose template

## Why monitor <QUICKSTART_TECHNOLOGY>

Explain the role and purpose of monitoring your technology. What are some specific difficulties about the technology? What are useful metrics to monitor?

### <QUICKSTART_TECHNOLOGY> quickstart highlights

Describe the specific features of your quickstart. Mentions things such as dashboard visuals, alerts, and the type of instrumentation. We recommend the following format:

Quick intro sentence:

- First highlight
- Second highlight
- Third highlight

### New Relic + <QUICKSTART_TECHNOLOGY> (Optional)

Describe how New Relic's capabilities can assist in monitoring your technology outside of what is included in the quickstart. Mention capabilities such as errors inbox, transaction traces, etc.

Quickstart usage

When writing about a quickstart the following language rules should be followed:

Capitalize the term quickstart if the word is at the start of a sentence or header.

"Quickstarts are a great way to get started with New Relic!"
If the term quickstarts is anywhere else in a sentence, use lower case.

"New Relic offers you a wide range of quickstarts to get you started."
Quickstarts is always a single word.

"Always use quickstarts, not quick starts."

Authors

Quickstart authors represent the creator of the quickstart.

You can define multiple author names, but it's recommended to use one of the follow formats.

company name
company name + author name
author name

Slug & title fields

https://newrelic.com/instant-observability/{slug}/{id}

The quickstart slug field defines the URL for the instant-observability website. It's important that you don't change the name after the quickstart has been created as the URL will break, and return a 404 if this field changes. Another important note is that slug must be all lower case and kebab-case.

Example:

slug: this-is-kebab-case-and-lower-cased

We will soon handle redirects more effectively for the I/O site to account for name changes.

The quickstart title field defines the display name of the quickstart in the UI and can be changed.

Summary & descriptions

See the generated docs for more details on description and summary.

Use the proper YAML formatting | for URL description and summary.
Please review the YAML cheat sheet for more details.
Descriptions shouldn't have H1 # headers, and all H1 # headers will be rendered to H2 ## by default.
Use only 1 H2 ## as your top header.
Use H3 ### only throughout the rest of your description. As the markdown only supports up to H3 ###.

description: |
  a description of the quickstart.

summary: |
  a summary of the quickstart.

Documentation

The first documentation URL listed in the documentation configuration should be the primary doc reference.
The see installation docs buttons will always link to the primary documentation URL.
Every quick start that should be "installable" needs a documentation URL and a data source configuration if you want to use the guided install flow.
Use the proper YAML formatting | for the URL description
Use the proper YAML formatting >- for documentation URL references.
Please review the YAML cheat sheet for more details.

documentation:
  - name: Name of documentation
    description: |
      Description of documentation
    url: >-
      https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/url/

Support Levels

All quickstarts will be set to Community level by default unless specified differently by the Author.
Levels can only be modified by New Relic employees.
If you have questions on how to increase the level of support please file an issue
The shield icon is only applied to those quickstarts with support level New Relic OR support Level Verified.
In most cases a quickstart that is referencing an experimental open source project should be set to the Community level.
If you are referencing an experimental project and want to set the quickstart to Verified please be aware of the support requirements below.

New Relic:

Verified for quality by New Relic
Created by New Relics employees
Supported by New Relic

Verified:

Verified for quality by New Relic
Created by New Relics employees or partners
Supported by individual authors or partners

Community:

Contributed & supported by the community
Created by community members
Supported by individual authors and community members

Icons

If you don't have a icon for your quickstart, you can use a generic new relic icon.

Icon files should go in the root quickstart directory, /quickstarts_name01
Icon are required and are used in both the Public Catalog and in New Relic One.
.png or .jpeg or .svg format
Max 1
Aspect ratio: 1:1
250px (width) x 100px (height)

Data Sources

When adding a data source the following format should be used. Data source ids can either refer to a CORE data source or a COMMUNITY data source.

For a list of the available CORE data sources, you can use NerdGraph for to explore the available data source ids and their corresponding metadata using this query.

COMMUNITY data sources are defined under the data-sources directory. COMMUNITY data sources should be referred to the path in that directory. COMMUNITY data source ids should be the id defined under the config.yml for that data source. Example: for the data source located at data-sources/argocd/config.yml, you would use the id defined in that yaml, which is argocd.

dataSourceIds:
  - argocd
  - postman

Keywords

When adding keywords to a quickstart the following format should be used. Keywords are used in UI navigation, filters and labels within the New Relic One I/O Catalog and the External I/O Catalog.

keywords:
  - a keyword
  - another keyword
  - yet another keyword

Keywords are strictly defined and you should provide a standard set of keywords in your quickstarts. If you submit a keyword that is not defined in this list below, it will be reviewed for use after you submit a PR.

the featured keyword is used to feature quickstarts. It can only be set by a New Relic employee. the newrelic partner keyword is used to feature quickstarts. It can only be set by a New Relic employee. to reflect your quickstart under a specific category in the add data section, make sure your keywords match the "terms" present in the "displayName" of this (GraphQL query)[https://api.newrelic.com/graphiql?#query=%7B%0A%20%20actor%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20nr1Catalog%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20categories%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20terms%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20displayName%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%7D%0A%7D%0A]

apm
automation
cms
containers
content management system
database
golang
infrastructure
java
kubernetes
language agent
load balancer
messaging
mobile
.net
networking
newrelic
newrelic partner
node.js
os
operating system
open source monitoring
php
python
queue
ruby
synthetics
testing
tracing
windows

Dashboards

Dashboards are defined under the dashboards/ directory and CANNOT be nested, a dashboard named example-dashboard would live under dashboards/example-dashboard. They're defined using a JSON file and a set of screenshots. The dashboard JSON file is generated by exporting a dashboard from New Relic as JSON and removing/updating a few fields.

To convert an exported dashboard to the correct schema:

Remove the permissions field
Set every instance of accountId to 0
Set every instance of accountIds (plural) to []
Set every instance of linkedEntityGuids to null

We provide a handy script to do this for you:

Make sure you have Node 16 or later and Yarn
Go into the utils directory: cd utils
Install dependencies: yarn install
Run yarn sanitize-dashboard example-dashboard

An example dashboard configuration looks like this:

# in dashboards/example-dashboard directory
example-dashboard.json
example-screenshot1.png
exmaple-screenshot2.png

Dashboard JSON Fields

field	required?	description
name	yes	The name of the dashboard, must be unique across all dashboards in the system. Name uniqueness will be checked at pull request time
description	no	A nice description of the dashboard, displayed in the catalogue
pages	yes	The main configuration for the dashboard, generated when exporting from New Relic
variables	no	Variables for the dashboard

Dashboard Permissions

When copying dashboard JSON from the New Relic One platform a permissions field is always included in the code. You do not need this in a quickstart's dashboard JSON.
However if you wish to import a quickstart's dashboard into New Relic outside of the quickstart installation flow, you will need to include this permissions field.
Refer to this documentation on importing / exporting dashboards from the New Relic One platform.

{
  "name": "Dashboard Name",
  "description": null,
  "permissions": "PUBLIC_READ_WRITE"
}

Dashboard name uniqueness

A dashboard's name must be unique. After providing a name in the dashboard.json file, you can check if your dashboard's name already exists by running yarn run check_dashboard_name_uniqueness from the utils directory.
this script will check and notify you of duplicate dashboard names in the repository.
As a best practice you should run this script when creating a new dashboard.

Dashboard screenshots

Dashboard images are optional but highly recommended to preview the visual functionality of a dashboard.
File name should be dashboard_name01, dashboard_name02, etc
Dashboards images should be stored in that dashboard's directory with its JSON file. ex: dashboards/dashboard_name/dashboard_name01.png.
Must be in .png, .jpg, or .jpeg format
Each image file must be less than 4MB in size, please optimize your screenshots for the web
There should be no more than 12 dashboard or images per quickstart
For best results use aspect ratio: 16:9
For best results use 800 px (width)
For best results use 450 px (height)

Alerts

Alerts are defined as policies, which are composed of multiple alert conditions. They are located under the alert-policies/ directory and CANNOT be nested, an alert policy named example-policy would live under alert-policies/example-policy. Each condition within a policy is defined using a yaml file. For more information on creating New Relic alert conditions, see Introduction to alerts

DEPRECATION WARNING - Standalone alerts are deprecated and should only be used in quickstarts.

name: Example alert condition

# Description and details
description: |
  Describe the purpose of this alert condition.
  You can use multiple lines.
  Try to be as descriptive as possible and provide "The Why".

# Type of alert: BASELINE | STATIC
type: BASELINE

# NRQL query
nrql:
  # Baseline alerts can use an optional FACET
  query: "FROM Metric SELECT average(metric.name) FACET entity.name"

# Direction in which baseline is set (Default: LOWER_ONLY)
baselineDirection: LOWER_ONLY | UPPER_AND_LOWER | UPPER_ONLY

# List of Critical and Warning thresholds for the condition
terms:
  - priority: CRITICAL
    # Operator used to compare against the threshold.
    operator: ABOVE
    # Value that triggers a violation
    threshold: 3
    # Time in seconds; 120 - 3600, must be a multiple of 60 for Baseline conditions
    thresholdDuration: 60
    # How many data points must be in violation for the duration
    thresholdOccurrences: ALL | AT_LEAST_ONCE

  # Adding a Warning threshold is optional
  - priority: WARNING
    operator: ABOVE
    threshold: 1
    thresholdDuration: 300
    thresholdOccurrences: ALL | AT_LEAST_ONCE

# Loss of Signal Settings
expiration:
  # Close open violations if signal is lost (Default: false)
  closeViolationsOnExpiration: true | false
  # Open "Loss of Signal" violation if signal is lost (Default: false)
  openViolationOnExpiration: true | false
  # Time in seconds; Max value: 172800 (48hrs), null if closeViolationsOnExpiration and openViolationOnExpiration are both 'false'
  expirationDuration:

# Advanced Signal Settings
signal:
  # Max Value for Baseline conditions = 20
  evaluationOffset: 3
  # Type of value that should be used to fill gaps
  fillOption: LAST_VALUE | NONE | STATIC
  # Integer; Used in conjunction with STATIC fillOption, otherwise null
  fillValue:

# OPTIONAL: URL of runbook to be sent with notification
runbookUrl:

# Duration after which a violation automatically closes
# Time in seconds; 300 - 2592000 (Default: 86400 [1 day])
violationTimeLimitSeconds: 86400

An example alert policy looks like this:

# in alert-policies/example-policy directory
example-alert-condition.yml
example-alert-condition2.yml

Alert condition fields

field	required?	default	description
name	yes		The name of the alert, for display within New Relic
description	no		A description for the alert

For documentation on the rest of the alert condition fields, please review the Introduction to alerts

Data sources

Data sources represent a single type of instrumentation, such as an agent, attributes on a transaction, a cloud provider integration, a third-party integration, etc. They can be broken out into two categories, CORE and COMMUNITY. The CORE data sources are provided by New Relic One and do not exist within this repository, the COMMUNITY data sources are defined within this repository.

To see the available CORE data sources, you can use NerdGraph to explore the available data source ids and their corresponding metadata using this query.

COMMUNITY data sources live in the data-sources/ directory and CANNOT be nested. Example: data-sources/example/config.yml

# A unique identifier for the data source
id: example

# Display name for the data source
displayName: Example Data Source

description: |
  test

install:
  primary:
    nerdlet:
      nerdletId: test.test-nerdlet
      nerdletState:
        test_state: test
      requiresAccount: true
  fallback:
    link:
      url: https://newrelic.com

# An icon for display within the catalog
icon: icon.png

# Searchable words or phrases
keywords:
  - test
  - keyword2

# Terms related to the categories for the data source.
#
# NOTE:
# Although not required, highly recommended because
# they determine category placement. Otherwise will be
# in the 'Other' category. See below table for category term mappings.
categoryTerms:
  - test
  - term2

An example data source directory looks like this:

# in data-sources/example directory
config.yml
icon.png

Data source fields

field	required?	description
id	yes	User defined id for the data source, must be unique
displayName	yes	The human-readable name for the data source
description	no	A short form description of the data source in plain text. (This field does not support markdown syntax and has a max-length of 240 characters)
icon	yes	The path to an icon for the data source. The icon should follow the sizing conventions of the quickstart icon
keywords	no	A list of keywords for searching and filtering the catalogue
categoryTerms	no	A list of terms that relate to categories within the catalogue, this controls which categories the data source shows up under. See the category term mapping here
install	yes	Configuration for the installation. See Install fields for examples on how to use the `primary` and `fallback` fields.
install.primary	yes	The type of installation. Options are one of `link` or `nerdlet` as a subfield.
install.primary.nerdlet	no if `install.primary.link` is defined	Configuration for installation of `nerdlet` type. Must have `nerdletId`, `requiresAccount` and optionally `nerdletState` as subfields.
install.primary.link	no if `install.primary.nerdlet` is defined	Configuration for installation of `link` type. Must have `url` as a subfield.
install.fallback	no	Uses the same fields as `install.primary`

Data source install fields

nerdlet

Directs the user to a nerdlet to finish installing instrumentation
Example:

install:
  primary:
    nerdlet:
      nerdletId: test.test-nerdlet
      nerdletState:
        test_state: test
      requiresAccount: true

link
- Directs the user to a documentation link to finish installing instrumentation
- Example:
```
install:
  primary:
    link:
      url: https://newrelic.com
```

Quickstart Preview

⚠️ There is currently no way to preview Quickstarts locally.

Deprecated preview steps

Quickstart Previews are available for contributors to review their new or improved quickstarts directly from the Public I/O site! We provide two ways to view a preview:

### Local Quickstart Preview

- To view a local quickstart preview, you can run the command `yarn preview node-js/express` or `yarn preview catchpoint` using the _path_ to the quickstart within the `quickstarts/` directory.
- This script needs to be run under the `utils` directory.
- The script will run a local server for the Public I/O site to fetch files from the specified quickstart.
- Currently this functionality is not working on the Public I/O site, but it is entirely possible to use it locally by running the older _deprecated_ version of the site [on your machine](https://github.com/newrelic/instant-observability-website#%EF%B8%8F-local-development).
- The command line will provide a link that can be navigated to view the quickstart.
  - In order for local quickstart preview to be enabled on the Public I/O site, there needs to be a `config.yml` file present in the quickstart directory. However, there does not need to have any content inside the file.
  - _Only one quickstart may be served for local quickstart preview_

> Note: While working on a quickstart, changes may not be updated in the local preview automatically. If you do not see immediate changes, refresh the page to pull in recent updates.

#### Step-by-step guide to view Local Quickstart Preview

Clone down the [_deprecated_ site](https://github.com/newrelic/instant-observability-website#%EF%B8%8F-local-development) to your machine and follow the local development instructions. Once you have it up and running, continue to the steps below.

Starting from the top level of the repository: `newrelic-quickstarts`

```bash
cd utils
yarn install
yarn preview aws/amazon-msk
```

> Note: `aws/amazon-msk` is just an example. It can be replaced with the path to any quickstart.

## Support

### Pull Request Quickstart Preview

- Once a PR is open for a quickstart, a comment will be automatically generated with a link to the quickstart associated with the PR.
- If a PR has multiple quickstarts, a link will be generated in the PR for each quickstart.

Feature requests

Feature requests should be submitted in the Issue tracker, with a description of the expected behavior & use case, where they'll remain closed until sufficient interest, e.g. 👍 reactions, has been shown by the community. Before submitting an Issue, please search for similar ones in the closed issues.

Slack

We host an internal help Slack channel. You can contact the teams supporting quickstarts and I/O with any questions here.

Partnerships

Many of our quickstarts are built by our I/O Ecosystem partners. If you have interest in partnering with New Relic on a developing a quickstart create an issue in the repository and we will follow up on the request.

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

Welcome 👋

Quickstarts contributor guidelines

Quickstart PR review workflow

Pull requests

Contributor license agreement

Quickstart definitions

Quickstarts

Fields

Style tips

Quickstart description prose template

Quickstart usage

Authors

Slug & title fields

Summary & descriptions

Documentation

Support Levels

Icons

Data Sources

Keywords

Dashboards

Dashboard JSON Fields

Dashboard Permissions

Dashboard name uniqueness

Dashboard screenshots

Alerts

Alert condition fields

Data sources

Data source fields

Data source install fields

Quickstart Preview

Feature requests

Slack

Partnerships

Files

CONTRIBUTING.md

Latest commit

History

CONTRIBUTING.md

File metadata and controls

Contributing

Welcome 👋

Quickstarts contributor guidelines

Quickstart PR review workflow

Pull requests

Contributor license agreement

Quickstart definitions

Quickstarts

Fields

Style tips

Quickstart description prose template

Quickstart usage

Authors

Slug & title fields

Summary & descriptions

Documentation

Support Levels

Icons

Data Sources

Keywords

Dashboards

Dashboard JSON Fields

Dashboard Permissions

Dashboard name uniqueness

Dashboard screenshots

Alerts

Alert condition fields

Data sources

Data source fields

Data source install fields

Quickstart Preview

Feature requests

Slack

Partnerships