Overview

Facets are user-defined tags and attributes from your pipelines. They are useful for both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Facets allow you to manipulate your pipelines in your CI Pipeline monitors, and in search queries that appear on dashboards and in notebooks.

Creating facets is not required for searching pipeline executions. Autocomplete capabilities use existing facets, but also any input that matches incoming pipeline executions applies.

Common facets

Navigate to Software Delivery > CI Visibility > Executions to access the list of facets left of the pipeline executions list.

The CI Visibility Explorer includes the following out-of-the-box facets:

You can use facets in the CI Visibility Explorer to:

• Search for and filter pipeline executions
• Perform pipeline analytics
• Start troubleshooting once your pipelines complete

Qualitative facets

Use qualitative facets when you need to:

• Get relative insights for values.
• Count unique values.
• Frequently filter your pipeline executions against particular values. For example, create a facet on an environment tag to scope troubleshooting down to development, staging, or production environments.
  

Note: Although facets are not required for filtering on tags, defining facets for tags that you often use during investigations can help reduce your time to resolution.

Quantitative measures

Use quantitative measures when you need to:

• Aggregate values from multiple pipeline executions.
• Range filter your pipeline executions.
• Sort your pipeline executions against that value.

Types

Measures have either a long integer or double value for equivalent capabilities.

Units

Measures support units (time in seconds or size in bytes) for handling of orders of magnitude at query time and display time. The unit is a property of the measure itself, not of the field.

For example, consider a duration measure in nanoseconds. Suppose pipeline executions from service:A have duration:10000000, meaning 10 milliseconds. Supposed pipeline executions from service:B have duration:5000000, meaning 5 milliseconds. Use duration:>2ms to consistently query pipeline execution tags from both services at once. For more information about search queries, see Search Syntax.

Facet panel

The search bar provides the most comprehensive set of interactions to filter and group your data. However, for many cases, the facet panel is a straightforward way to navigate into your data. Open a facet to see a summary of its content for the scope of the current query.

The search bar and URL automatically reflect your selections from the facet panel.

• Facets (qualitative) come with a top list of unique values, and a count of pipeline executions matching each of them.
• Measures (quantitative) come with a slider indicating minimum and maximum values. Use the slider, or input numerical values, to scope the search query to different bounds.

Grouping facets

Facets are grouped into meaningful themes in the facet list. Assigning or reassigning a group for a facet affects only the facet list, and has no impact on search or analytics.

Filtering facets

Use the search facets box on the facet panel to scope the whole facet list and navigate to the facet you need to interact with. Search facets uses the facet display name and field name to scope results.

Creating facets

Creating a facet on a pipeline execution attribute or tag is not a mandatory step to search for pipeline executions. Facets are useful if you wish to add a meaningful description to a specific pipeline execution attribute, or if you want the attribute values to appear on the Facets list.

Creating facets from the Pipeline Executions side panels

The easiest way to create a facet is to add it from the Pipeline Executions side panel so that most of the facet details are pre-filled.

1. Navigate to a pipeline execution of interest in the CI Visibility Explorer that contains the field to create a facet on.

2. Open the Pipeline Executions side panel by selecting the pipeline execution from the list.

3. Click on the desired field (in the Info tab for a pipeline execution’s span) and create a facet from there:

   • If the field has a numerical value, you can create either a facet or a measure.
   • If the field has a string value, only facet creation is available.

Creating facets from the facet list

If finding a pipeline execution that has the desired field is not an option, create a facet directly from the facet panel by clicking + Add.

Define the underlying field (key) name for this facet:

• Use tag key name for infrastructure tags.
• Use the attribute path for pipeline execution attributes, with @ prefix.

Autocomplete based on the content in pipeline executions of the current views helps you to define the proper field name. But you can use virtually any value here, specifically in the case that you don’t yet have matching pipeline executions received by Datadog.

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Learn how to search your pipelinesDOCUMENTATION Learn about the CI Visibility ExplorerDOCUMENTATION