As a Splunk app developer, it’s critical that you set up your users for success. This includes marketing your app toward the right audience, making sure it’s easy for new customers to get up and running, and helping existing customers to keep things running smoothly. But how exactly can you do all of this? Through communicating strategic information directly to your users.
In this overview, we’ll walk you through some of the different ways you can reach out to your users to help them get the most out of your app.
Reach Your Intended Audience on Splunkbase
Splunkbase is Splunk’s app marketplace. Splunk platform system admins turn to Splunkbase to find apps that solve their problems so that they don’t need to build out every solution themselves. From streamlined data ingestion to compelling visualizations to proactive alerting to integrations with other systems, Splunk apps are hugely valuable to our customers.
The following screenshot shows an example of the Splunk DB Connect app listing on Splunkbase.
Publishing your app to Splunkbase is a great way to reach these customers, but how do you make sure the right people are able to discover and download your app? At .conf22, Burch, Splunker and Splunk Trust member, described how to create a good Splunkbase listing in his breakout session, Best Practices and Better Practices for App Development. According to Burch, a good Splunkbase listing has the following characteristics.
- Contains a compelling overview.
- Is concise!
- Includes basic documentation and support information.
Be sure to check out the session recording for the complete list of what makes a good Splunkbase listing.
For more information about creating a Splunkbase listing, see Submit content to Splunkbase.
Make “Getting Started” Simple With a Setup Page
Your app might be as simple to install as selecting “Install App” in Splunk Web. But your app might also need to collect some information from its new users, such as licenses, API keys, or indexes to run on before it can work. If your app requires your users to provide configuration information, you can use a setup page to collect these details.
A setup page is a view in your app that displays the first time a user launches the app in Splunk Web. This view guides users through the app configuration workflow and prompts them to provide any information required for the app to run. After a user completes setup, they are redirected to the app’s home page and can begin using the app.
Here’s an example of a setup page that prompts users to create a password for the app.
For more information about setup pages, see Enable first-run configuration with setup pages in Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise.
Log Errors from Your App
Let’s face it. Sometimes things go wrong, and your app might not end up working the way you were expecting. But by logging useful information from your app straight to your customers’ indexes, you can make it easy for them, and for you, to get back on track.
You can create a custom log file in your app to log errors related to modular inputs, custom search commands, external lookups, and other Splunk platform extensions. Custom log files help your users to quickly identify and debug any issues that come up, so that they can get back to using your app to maximize the value of their data.
For example, say your app needs an API token to authenticate to an external API, but your customers didn’t configure this token before launching the app. You can log an error message to surface this issue, as shown in the following code snippet.
level=ERROR, appid=buttercup_games, message="API key not configured.", file=/opt/splunk/etc/apps/buttercup_games/bin/connect_to_api.py
Your users can then search for these errors in Splunk Web. For example, this Search Processing Language (SPL) string returns the error message shown above, as well as any other error messages generated by your app.
index=_internal appid=buttercup_games level=ERROR
To make troubleshooting even easier for your users, you can add scheduled searches to your app to automatically detect and alert users to errors that arise.
For more information about logging, see Logging for Splunk extensions in an app or add-on for Splunk Enterprise.
Message Your Users through the Bulletin Board
From time to time, you might need to reach out to users with specific roles to communicate key information about your app. For example, say you need to remind admins that it’s time to renew their licenses, prompt sc_admins to complete installation, or let users know that they must update their apps before updating their Splunk platform installations to avoid breaking changes.
You can message app users with specified roles using the bulletin board. The bulletin board lets you use the Splunk platform REST API to create custom messages that display in Splunk Web for users assigned to the roles that you specify. Users can view bulletin board messages through the Messages menu when they log in to Splunk Web, as shown in the following image.
For more information about bulletin board messages, see Message users in apps for Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise.
Get User Metrics from Splunkbase
The best way to make sure you’re seeing eye to eye with your app’s users is to speak with them directly. But how do you even know who, exactly, these users are?
When someone downloads your app from Splunkbase, they have the option to share their contact information. You can use this information to provide support and updates, elicit feedback, and conduct usability testing.
The following screenshot shows how to download user contact information from Splunkbase.
For more information about gathering user metrics, see User leads.
Build a Community for Your Users
Splunk’s customers are passionate and knowledgeable about the platform and they generally enjoy sharing their expertise with one another. You can build a community for your app’s users to foster a support network that helps them have the best experience possible with your app.
One community program that Splunk offers is Splunk Answers, a question and answer forum for users to get help deploying, managing, and using Splunk products. Users can search existing posts for solutions and ask questions of their own if they can't find what they're looking for. People who answer questions in the forum are experienced Splunk customers, partners, or employees who are passionate about helping the community.
Your customers can also use Splunk Answers tags to identify content related to your app. When you upload your app to Splunkbase, Splunkbase generates a Splunk Answers tag for it. As a best practice, make sure to note this tag in your Splunkbase listing, as well as in any other support material you provide, including in-app dashboards and readme files.
For example, the “dbconnect” tag, as shown in the following screenshot, helps users with questions about Splunk DB Connect to connect with each other and with the app development team.
To get started building a community for your users, see Splunk Answers.
What’s Next?
Now, it’s time to start implementing these methods of communicating with users in your own Splunk apps!
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out at devinfo@splunk.com.
You can also join us in the #appdev channel of the `splunk-usergroups` Slack workspace, which you can join at splk.it/slack. We post there under the @taylor and @tedd handles and would be happy to chat about your thoughts on this blog post. Many thanks to @smcmaster , @chuggard_splunk , and @dhosaka for their assistance with this article!
