[Lens] Include help text or documentation for parts of the function editor

[wylieconlon]

Lens should help users understand the calculations that we offer by including more reference documentation in the product itself.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app (Team:KibanaApp)

[wylieconlon]

The main design question is: how can we present potentially long help text in the product itself? The existing help text that we offer is usually limited to one or two lines, but more descriptive documentation requires more space. Where do we put it?

[MichaelMarcialis]

@wylieconlon: Are you specifically wanting to add helper text to the Lens function choices (as shown in the screenshot below)? If so, I'd be happy to iterate on possibilities for presenting helpful descriptions for these functions. Do you have an example of existing help text that you would wish to use for each function, so I can get a sense of the size and contents? Also, do you have a timeframe that you're working within to get this implemented?

[wylieconlon]

@MichaelMarcialis We want to have what is basically reference documentation for anything that isn't obvious. For example the date histogram has an "auto" mode: we need to document what this does and how users can interact with it. Same with the "granularity" option for the intervals function. The expected size of the content would be anything bigger than we can fit in a tooltip, so I would imagine we need some ability to scroll vertically.

This is part of the effort to add advanced Lens documentation which is planned for 7.11, so maybe a good timeline is before the end of the month?

[wylieconlon]

I think we should keep this issue, but narrow the scope a bit more. I would consider two types of documentation to be relevant on specific operations:

1. Explanation of what the function does, including table examples. For example, we have done this to describe what "Counter rate" does

2. Explanation of a specific form option, such as the granularity option

I would expect that in both cases we handle this as an EuiLink, and the main question is what happens when you click a link. Does it open up in a modal? Does it link to the public Lens documentation website?

[flash1293]

I think we have a general solution for this and for some parts help popovers are implemented already. I'm going to close this issue, if there are missing parts we want to add let's open specific issues for them