SC-22374 Add side navigation to docs

docs/guide/integrations-guide.md

@@ -22,9 +22,9 @@ Explore our [extensive list of integrations](/docs/integration/), each designed
 
 An [App](/docs/guide/app-guide) is a core concept in Sematext.  As part of the monitoring setup you will create an App for the desired integration type.
 
-Go to the [Apps](https://apps.sematext.com/ui/integrations/apps) page to create a new App. Pick a solution type and all the available integrations for that solution will be listed. 
+Go to the [Apps](https://apps.sematext.com/ui/integrations/apps) page by clicking the Sematext icon at the top of the left navigation menu to create a new App. Pick a solution type and all the available integrations for that solution will be listed. 
 
-![Sematext Cloud - Add New App](/docs/images/guide/integrations/add-new-solution.jpg)
+![Sematext Cloud - Add New App](/docs/images/guide/integrations/add-new-solution.png)
 
 Hover over any integration card and click to create the respective App.
 

docs/guide/navigation-guide.md

@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
+title: Navigating Sematext Cloud
+description: Navigating Sematext Cloud: Left Menu Guide
+
+The left navigation menu provides access to all primary product areas and features, organized into functional categories. It supports hierarchical navigation, where main menu items may contain sub-level menus when applicable. Both the main menu and sub-level menus are collapsible and expandable. Each level includes a pin control in the top-right corner that allows the menu to remain expanded or collapse automatically, enabling users to optimize screen space while maintaining quick access to frequently used sections.
+
+![Left Navigation Getting Started](/docs/images/guide/left-navigation/left-navigation-getting-started.png)
+
+Clicking the Sematext icon at the top of the left navigation menu navigates to the All [Apps](/docs/guide/app-guide/) screen, which displays a list of all configured [Infra](/docs/monitoring/infrastructure/), [Monitoring](/docs/monitoring/), [Logs](/docs/logs/), [Tracing](/docs/tracing/), [Synthetics](/docs/synthetics/), and [Experience](/docs/experience/) Apps.
+
+## Search
+
+The Search bar provides global querying across logs, monitoring, tracing, synthetics, experience, and infrastructure Apps. It supports fast navigation and direct access to an [App](/docs/guide/app-guide/) without requiring manual traversal of the left navigation menu.
+
+## Getting Started
+
+The Getting Started page includes items arranged in a logical chronological order to help users set up and begin using the observability suite. The content is divided into its own categories. Each card is clickable and navigates to the corresponding setup action. When a step is completed, a green check indicator is displayed to show that the step has been completed, allowing the user to proceed to the next step and begin benefiting from the full observability suite.
+
+## Insights and Analysis
+
+This section contains tools used for analysis, correlation, and high-level visibility across systems and services.
+
+### Alerts
+
+[Alerts](/docs/guide/alerts-guide/) are rules that monitor metrics, traces, logs, real user experience, and synthetic checks for specific conditions and trigger notifications when those conditions are met. Alerts can be based on static thresholds, heartbeat checks that detect when data stops arriving, or statistical anomaly detection that identifies deviations from expected behavior. They operate across different data sources and can be configured with filters, grouping, and notification channels to notify the appropriate team or system when an issue occurs.
+
+### Events
+
+[Events](/docs/events/) are discrete, time-stamped, low-volume signals representing significant occurrences such as deployments, system restarts, alerts, agent status changes, or other operational changes. They are used to provide context and correlation with metrics, logs, and other observability data, and can be generated automatically by monitored systems and agents or added manually via the API or user interface. Events are searchable, filterable, and viewable on a timeline to support troubleshooting and analysis of how changes impact system behavior.
+
+### Network Map
+
+[Network Map](/docs/network-map/) provides an eBPF-powered real-time topology view of your infrastructure showing how services, pods, containers, and processes communicate with each other across hosts and Kubernetes clusters. It automatically discovers network connections without code changes, visualizes traffic flows and dependencies, and supports drill-down from high-level cluster views to individual processes. Network Map helps engineers understand service relationships, identify unexpected paths or missing connections, and analyze resource usage and communication patterns across the network. 
+sematext.com
+
+### Dashboards
+
+[Dashboards](/docs/dashboards/) are customizable visual interfaces that consolidate metrics, logs, and other observability data into charts, tables, and widgets. They allow users to arrange and configure data visualizations to monitor the health and performance of systems and applications. Dashboards support multiple data sources, flexible layout options, query-based visualizations.
+
+## Observability Suite
+
+This category includes core observability capabilities covering metrics, logs, traces, and user experience and synthetics data.
+
+### Monitoring
+
+[Monitoring](/docs/monitoring/) involves the collection and visualization of performance and health metrics from services that run in your infrastructure. It supports [more than 40 integrations](/docs/integration/) to automatically gather data at scale across servers, containers, services, and cloud resources. Monitoring is used to analyze trends, surface anomalies, correlate performance metrics and trigger alert rules based on metric conditions to detect issues and track system behavior over time. 
+
+### Logs
+
+[Logs](/docs/logs/) are ingested from infrastructure, applications, containers, and external sources, and can be parsed, filtered, and enriched to support troubleshooting, error diagnosis, and historical analysis. Logs provide fast search with rich query syntax, supports custom reports and alerting based on log conditions. 
+
+### Tracing
+
+[Tracing](/docs/tracing/) is an OpenTelemetry-based distributed solution that captures detailed request flows across services in a distributed system. It provides end-to-end visibility into application performance, latency patterns, and error propagation, allowing engineers to analyze traces, understand bottlenecks, and troubleshoot distributed microservices. 
+
+### Synthetics
+
+[Synthetics](/docs/synthetics/) is active monitoring that executes scheduled checks against HTTP endpoints, websites, and scripted user journeys from multiple global locations. It is used to monitor uptime, performance, and correctness of APIs and web applications by simulating user traffic at configured intervals. Synthetics records performance data for each monitor run, enabling early detection of availability and response issues.
+
+### Experience
+
+[Experience](/docs/experience/) refers to real user monitoring (RUM) that measures front-end performance and user experience metrics directly from web browser interactions. It collects performance data such as page load times, resource timing, and user session details from actual visitors, enabling analysis of frontend responsiveness and user satisfaction. Experience helps teams evaluate how real users perceive application performance and correlate frontend issues with backend telemetry.
+
+## Infrastructure Monitoring
+
+[Infrastructure Monitoring](/docs/monitoring/infrastructure/) provides insights into the performance and state of your infrastructure components including servers, containers, Kubernetes clusters, processes, and inventory. It uses the Sematext Agent to collect metrics, events, and metadata from hosts and orchestrated environments, and presents them in structured reports within an Infra App for troubleshooting, capacity planning, and operational visibility.
+
+All Infrastructure Monitoring features listed below are available after creating an Infra App, which serves as the primary entry point for getting started with the Sematext Cloud observability suite. The Infra App enables data collection, discovery, and visualization for hosts, containers, Kubernetes environments, and related infrastructure components.
+
+### Fleet and Discovery
+
+[Fleet and Discovery](/docs/fleet/) offers a centralized view of all deployed [Sematext Agents](/docs/agents/sematext-agent/) and discovered services and log sources within your infrastructure. It lists hosts with installed agents, shows agent status and diagnostics, and displays discovered services and log sources to facilitate automatic or manual setup of monitoring and log shipping without additional configuration. 
+
+### Hosts
+
+Shows [hosts](/docs/monitoring/servers/) where [Sematext Agents](/docs/agents/sematext-agent/) are running and shows core operating system metrics such as CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. It enables detailed inspection of host-level health, performance trends, and agent status for root cause analysis.
+
+### Kubernetes
+
+[Kubernetes](/docs/monitoring/kubernetes/) view focuses on observability of Kubernetes clusters by collecting metrics and state data for cluster components, nodes, pods, and workloads. It provides cluster-level metrics, health indicators, and performance insights that help troubleshoot container orchestration issues. 
+
+### Containers
+
+[Containers](/docs/monitoring/containers/) show metrics and metadata for containerized workloads across your infrastructure. It collects data on container resource usage and lifecycle, enabling tracking of container performance and behavior across container runtimes such as Docker, containerd and orchestrators.
+
+### Processes
+
+[Processes](/monitoring/processes/) lists running processes on monitored hosts along with resource consumption metrics like CPU and memory. It supports filtering and analysis of processes to identify performance bottlenecks and anomalous resource usage.
+
+### Inventory
+
+[Inventory](docs/monitoring/inventory/) presents machine-related information such as host attributes, installed software packages, and container image metadata. It enables comparison of host configurations and inventory items across infrastructure, supporting troubleshooting and consistency verification.
+
+### Heartbeats
+
+[Heartbeats](/docs/alerts/creating-heartbeat-alerts/) tracks the arrival of expected data signals from monitored hosts, services, or data sources and detects missing data when a heartbeat is not received within a configured period. Heartbeat signals are commonly used to trigger alerts when a monitored entity stops reporting.
+
+## Security and Compliance
+
+### Audit Trail
+
+[Audit Trail](/docs/guide/audit-trail/) records user actions and configuration changes performed within Sematext Cloud. It provides a chronological log of activities such as creating, updating, or deleting apps, alerts, dashboards, and account settings. Audit Trail is used for operational auditing, security review, and compliance purposes by enabling traceability of changes and accountability across users and teams.
+
+## Product and Account Management
+
+### Notifications
+
+Notifications displays system and account-related messages including administrative notices.
+
+### Help
+
+Help provides access to documentation and support resources.
+
+### Team
+
+[Team](/docs/team/) is used to manage users, roles, and access permissions within your Sematext Cloud account.
+
+### Settings
+
+Settings contain configuration options for integrations, account preferences, and organizational setup.
+
+The account identifier shown at the bottom of the navigation indicates the currently active user context.

docs/logs/reduce-costs-with-pipelines.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-title: How Logs Pipelines Can Reduce Your Log Monitoring Costs
+title: Reduce Your Log Monitoring Costs
 description: Use Logs Pipeline processor to drop noise events and extract vital information from long text fields to reduce your costs.
 
 Log [pipelines](/docs/logs/pipelines) offer a range of [processors](/docs/logs/processors-overview) designed to improve signal to noise ratio in your logs, help you derive more value from logs both business and IT. Decreasing daily log volume subsequently leads to lower costs. Below are several strategies for using log pipelines effectively for cost-saving purposes.

docs/logs/settings.md

@@ -14,26 +14,36 @@ The settings include:
 
 ## Side Navigation
 
-The persistent region on the left that can be collapsed, is used to easily switch across monitoring, log management, real user monitoring, and other user & team features. All side navigation tabs are selectable. If they have chevrons, it indicates that the top level section is collapsible and contains additional subitems. The subitems will let you explore all your Apps, or choose a particular App.
+The left navigation menu provides access to [all primary product areas and features](/docs/guide/navigation-guide), organized into functional categories. When you click on Logs, you will see a list of your Logs Apps. Selecting any Logs App opens a contextual sub-menu that contains actions and sections specific to that Logs App. 
 
-Side navigation top level sections for infrastructure and application performance monitoring, log management, and real user monitoring:
+Sub-level sections for a Logs App include:
 
-- [Discovery](/docs/logs/discovery/intro/)
-- [Infrastructure](/docs/monitoring/infrastructure/)
-- [Monitoring](/docs/monitoring/)
-- [Logs](/docs/logs/)
-- [Synthetics](/docs/synthetics/)
-- [Experience](/docs/experience/)
-- [Alerts](/docs/experience/)
-- [Events](/docs/events/)
-- [Dashboards](/docs/dashboards/)
+### Reports 
 
-Side navigation sections for team features and settings:
+Provides out-of-the-box reports based on the selected integrations. You can also use the **+ Add Report** button to create custom reports tailored to your Logs App.
 
-- [Team](/docs/team/)
-- Settings
+### Alerts 
 
-![](/docs/images/guide/logs/side-navigation_2.png)
+The [Alerts](/docs/guide/alerts-guide/). section shows recently triggered alerts for your Logs App. It also includes Alert Rules, where you can view, manage, and create new alert rules to get notified based on log patterns, thresholds, or anomalies.
+
+### Setup & Configuration
+
+This section contains all options for shipping logs to your Logs App, including:
+
+- Installing the **[Sematext Agent](/docs/agents/)** on additional hosts
+- Configuring log shipping from **[discovered log sources](/docs/logs/discovery/intro/)** on existing hosts without additional installation
+- [Manual log shipping methods](/docs/logs/sending-log-events/#custom-integration-options) such as the Sematext Logs API (compatible with Elasticsearch and OpenSearch), integrations with syslog-ng, rsyslog, Logstash, Fluentd, and other popular log shippers, as well as language-specific logging libraries and frameworks.
+
+It also includes:
+
+- **[Logs Pipelines](/docs/logs/pipelines/)** – Define and manage Logs Pipelines to parse, filter, enrich, transform, or route logs before indexing.
+- **App Settings** – Configure App level settings such as retention, data access, integrations, and general preferences.
+
+### Tools & Resources
+
+- **[Custom Dashboards](/docs/dashboards/)** – Build and manage dashboards to visualize and aggregate your logs using the Chart Builder.
+- **Troubleshooting** – Tools and guidance to help diagnose log ingestion issues.
+- **Documentation** – Direct access to relevant documentation, guides, and examples for working with your Logs App.
 
 ## App Actions
 

mkdocs.yml

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ site_url: https://sematext.com/docs/
 nav:
     - Getting Started: index.md
     - User Guide:
+      - Navigation Guide: guide/navigation-guide.md
       - What is an App?: guide/app-guide.md
       - Pricing Guide: guide/pricing-guide.md
       - Data Correlation:
@@ -78,7 +79,7 @@ nav:
       - Handling Sensitive Data: logs/handle-sensitive-data-with-pipelines.md
       - Too many fields in the index: logs/too-many-fields-in-index.md
       - Trim Big Logs to Cut Costs: logs/identify-log-volume-spikes.md
-      - Reducing Log Monitoring Costs: logs/reduce-costs-with-pipelines.md
+      - Reduce Your Log Monitoring Costs: logs/reduce-costs-with-pipelines.md
       - Plan Recommendations: logs/plan-recommendations.md
       - Logs Usage Screen: logs/logs-usage-screen.md
       - Extracting Fields & Metrics from Logs: logs/extracting-metrics-and-insights-from-logs.md