Diagrams

Diagrams enhance understanding of complex systems, processes, and concepts. They should complement text, ensuring clarity and purpose, while using visual elements like color and labels effectively.

Before you include a diagram in your documentation, review Best practices for including images.

You can use a diagram to help users understand complex system architecture, task flows, processes, and conceptual information. Diagrams supplement your content, so don't replace your writing with a diagram.

Ensure the text surrounding the diagram sufficiently captures the purpose and meaning you want to convey in the image. It's okay if a diagram has text in it.

See the following example of a simple diagram:

This diagram shows a standard 2-phase search process. The process is described before the diagram, in the section "Overview of parallel reduce search processing".

See the following example of a complex diagram:

Alerts are passed from Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud Platform in the form of saved searches, data models, and notable events. The alerts move either by CEF mapping fields or from CIM translation to Splunk App for SOAR. The events get passed to Splunk Phantom and Splunk SOAR.

This complex diagram uses color but doesn't rely on color to convey meaning. The lines use different colors, patterns, and arrows to differentiate the elements. The arrows are labeled so readers can follow the lines.