Ordered lists

Ordered lists are used to organize procedural information or sequential steps. They are essential when the order of list items is important, such as in task instructions.

When you write Splunk documentation, use ordered lists, sometimes called numbered lists, when the order of the list items is important. For example, you can use ordered lists to organize procedural information or sequential steps a user must follow. If you add substeps, use an ordered list marked by lowercase letters. If you need to describe a set of options for a list item, use a bulleted list or a table.

Qualities of ordered lists

Ordered lists must have the following qualities:

  • A complete lead-in sentence that describes the list's purpose, punctuated by a period or a colon
  • More than 1 list item
  • No more than 1 sublist for each list item if needed, with at least 2 items in a sublist
  • 1 action for each list item
  • Parallel sentence construction
  • Sentence case capitalization
  • End punctuation if the list items are complete sentences
  • No end punctuation if the list items are characters, words, or phrases

For more guidance on using lists, see Best practices for writing with lists.

Formatting task steps

When you're writing task steps, follow these guidelines to accurately describe and format the step:

Type of task step Guidance Example
Required step Write in the imperative mood.
  1. Log in to your instance.
Conditional step Phrase the step using an if statement.
  1. If you need to add an index to a single peer, create a separate indexes.conf file on the peer.
Optional step Preface the step with the word "Optional" in parentheses.
  1. (Optional) Create a splunk.com account.

Example

The following example of an ordered list contains a complete lead-in sentence. Each item in the list contains a single action and uses parallel construction. In step 3, the procedure has substeps. In step 4, the example shows an optional step.

Follow these steps to search for how many simulation style games were bought yesterday:
  1. In the time range picker, change the time range to Yesterday.
  2. Run the following search: 
    sourcetype=access_* status=200 action=purchase categoryId=simulation
  3. Find the number of purchases for each type of product.
    1. Remove categoryId=simulation from your search criteria and run the search again.
    2. Locate the unique categoryId values by selecting the categoryId field in the Selected Fields list.
    3. Select a categoryId name. The categoryId is added to your search and the search is automatically run again. The results show the number of purchases for that product.
  4. (Optional) For the number of purchases made each day of the previous week, run the search again for each time range.