Can someone explain what "category" is used for in props.conf?

[daniel333]

All,

CAn someone provide me some examples and why I would use categories in my props.conf?

category =
* Field used to classify sourcetypes for organization in the front end. Case
sensitive. Does not affect indexing behavior.
* Default: not set

Sounds like it just populates some GUI in apps I don't have? Are there some standard selections?

[rupesh26]

The category is used to define the type of logs the sourcetype belongs to, may be application, web .... etc.
will help to consolidate the sourcetypes under certain categories.

Example:
[logtometrics]
category = metrics
should_linemerge = false

Pre-defined categories as below.

[daniel333]

How is is this used? Like it is in a dashboard? Is it just admin metadata?

[rupesh26]

Its not used in dashboards. It will be a best practise, so anyone with a similar type of log will be able to pick up their sourcetype name. (As Splunk best practise is to reuse the existing sourcetypes)