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Metric data provides insights that users can add to queries and dashboards to better understand their system, especially when investigating issues. To make sense of these metrics, users often need to consult with experts in their organization, or spend time sifting through heaps of data to identify which metrics and labels have high utility. To provide additional context about open source metrics like Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics, use comments. This capability lets you annotate metrics with information to signify importance, help other users to understand usage context, and turn informal knowledge into institutional knowledge that can be used across your organization. You can add comments to metrics in any of the locations within Observability Platform mentioned on this page. Comments, and responses to comments, persist until the comments are deleted. This behavior applies to metrics impacted by drop rules and rollup rules, and comments on metrics and labels that were removed from queries.

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View comments

You can view a list of recent comments from your personal home page, and view specific comments in context of the Chronosphere entity that they’re attached to.

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View recent comments

To view recent comments, use the Recent comments panel on your personal home page.

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View contextual comments

Chronosphere entities that have comments display a message icon with a number that indicates how many comments were added. Choose one of the following options to view comments in context:
  1. In the navigation menu, click Go to Admin and then select Analyzers > Metrics Usage.
  2. In the list of metrics, select the metric you want to view comments for and then click View comments.
The Comments drawer appears and shows all comments for the selected metric. From there, you can take global actions and individual actions for your comments.

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Add comments

If a metric doesn’t have any comments, you can add them. If comments were already added to a metric, you can view comments to add additional comments, or reply to existing ones. You can use Markdown syntax to style your comment, and then click Show preview to preview the rendered content before saving. To mention a teammate in a comment, either enter their full email address, or enter @ and then choose as an option from the suggestions drop-down menu. For refined suggestions, enter @ followed by a partial value, such as @alice. To add a chart in a comment, click the line chart icon to open a dialog that supports PromQL metrics. Enter the metric you want to include in the chart and then click Insert. Choose one of the following options to add comments:
  1. In the navigation menu, click Go to Admin and then select Analyzers > Metrics Usage.
  2. In the list of metrics, select the metric you want to view comments for and then click Add comment.
  3. In the Comments drawer, enter your comment.
  4. Click Submit to save your comment.
The Comments drawer displays your comment for the selected metric. From there, you can take global actions and individual actions on your comment.

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Comment actions

When viewing or adding comments, you can complete global actions and individual actions as described in the following sections.

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Global actions

The following actions are available to all users for any comment:
  • link: Copy a link to a comment.
  • message: Reply to an existing comment.
  • pin: Pin a comment to the top of the comment thread.
  • checkmark: Resolve a comment.
  • refresh: Reopen a resolved comment.
  • New comment: Add a new comment to an existing comment.

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Actions for your comments

The following actions are available only for comments that you added:
  • pencil: Edit an existing comment.
  • trash can: Delete an existing comment.