The use of the field meta.span_type to identify Span Events and Span Links (hereafter called Span Annotations) is deprecated and was removed as of 2020-09-30.
Note that this only applies to using the field meta.span_type to identify Span Annotations.
meta.span_type for annotations.
If you are using the field for your own use, you can disregard this.
Datasets that use the field meta.span_type to identify Span Annotations will continue to work as they do now.
Teams are encouraged to migrate their systems to use meta.annotation_type to identify Span Annotations.
Honeycomb will no longer provide feature enhancements or bug fixes for Span Annotations that use meta.span_type as their identifying field.
Upgrade to the latest version of your Open Telemetry Exporter.
Regardless of what instrumentation library you use:
Identify which field represents the Span Annotation.
Go to your Dataset Settings > Definitions tab and set the field Metadata: Annotation Type to the field name that identifies Span Annotations.
If you are only using the field Metadata: Kind for Span Annotations, set it to blank (click the X to remove assignment on this field).
Save your changes.
(For example, Beelines, OpenTracing, and so on.)
Update your instrumentation code to replace the field name meta.span_type with the field name meta.annotation_type.
OR
If you use your own field name to identify Span Annotations, go to your Dataset Settings > Definitions tab and set the field Metadata: Annotation Type to your field name.
Set the field Metadata: Kind to blank (click the X to remove assignment on this field).
Save your changes.
You do not need to change your instrumentation code.
For more information the Definitions tab, see here.