four icons representing a dashboard

Ever dream of having a systems monitoring dashboard that was actually useful? One where you could move things around, resize them, and even choose what information you wanted to display? Large enterprise software packages may have decent dashboards, but what if you’re not a large enterprise or you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for bloatware? Perhaps you have a good dashboard that came with a specific server or piece of hardware, but it’s narrowly-focused and inflexible. You’ve probably thought about (or even tried) creating your own dashboard, but it’s a significant undertaking that’s not for the faint-of-heart. What’s the solution? Should we just learn to live with sub-optimal monitoring tools?

Here at Circonus, we decided that this was one problem we could eliminate. Since we’ve built a SaaS offering that’s flexible enough to handle multiple different data sources, why shouldn’t we build a dashboard that’s flexible enough to display them? So we created a configurable dashboard that lets you monitor your data however you want. Do you want to show graphs side-by-side but at different sizes? Done. Want an up-to-date list of alerts beside those graphs? Easy. How about some real-time metric charts that automatically refresh? No problem. Our new configurable dashboards allow you to add all these items and more. Let’s dig in and see how these new dashboards work.

Dashboard Basics

Start by going to the standard ‘Dashboard’ and clicking the new ‘My Dashboards’ tab. These dashboards are truly yours; any dashboards you create are only visible to you (by default) and are segregated by account. If you want to share a custom dashboard with everyone else on an account, check that dashboard’s ‘share’ checkbox in your list of custom dashboards.

After you have created a custom dashboard, you may set it to be your default dashboard by using the radio buttons down the left side of your custom dashboards list. If you do this, you will be greeted with your selected dashboard when you login to Circonus. By selecting the ‘Standard Circonus Dashboard’ as your default dashboard, you will revert to being greeted with the old dashboard you’re already used to seeing.

part of the interface for creating a new dashboard layout

To create a new custom dashboard, click the ‘+’ tab and choose a layout. At first you will see only a couple predefined layouts available, but after you create a dashboard, its layout will then be available to choose when creating other new dashboards.

Now a note about working with these dashboards: every action auto-saves so you never have to worry about losing changes you’ve made. However, if you haven’t given your dashboard a title, the dashboard isn’t permanently saved yet. If you forget to title your dashboard and go off to do other things, don’t worry, the dashboard you created is saved in your browser’s memory. All you have to do is visit the ‘My Dashboards’ page and your dashboard will be listed there. With two clicks you can give your dashboard a title and save it permanently. (Please note our minimum browser requirements ‘Firefox 4+ or Chrome’ which are especially applicable for these new custom dashboards, since we’re using some features which are not available in older browsers.)

So let’s create a dashboard. Choose a layout, click ‘Create Dashboard,’ and you will be taken to the new dashboard with the ‘Add A Widget’ panel extended. To begin, let’s check out the title area. Notice that when you hover over the title, a dropdown menu appears. This lists your other dashboards on the current account (as well as dashboards shared by other account members) and is useful for quickly switching between dashboards.

the dashboard interface showing the dashboard controls icons

To the right of the title are some icons. The first icon opens the grid options dialog, which lets you change the dimensions of the dashboard grid, hide the grid (it’s still active and usable, though), enable or disable text scaling, and choose whether or not to auto-hide the title bar in fullscreen mode. The second icon toggles fullscreen mode on and off. Once you enter fullscreen mode a third icon will appear, and this icon toggles the ‘Black Dash’ theme (this theme is only available in fullscreen mode). The current states of both fullscreen mode and the ‘Black Dash’ theme are saved with your dashboard.

One other note about the dashboard interface: if you leave a dashboard sitting for more than ten or fifteen seconds and notice that parts of the interface disappear (along with the mouse cursor), don’t worry, it’s just gone to sleep! A move of the mouse will make everything visible again. (If there are any widget settings panels open, though, the sleep timer will not activate.)

Widgets

Now for the meat of it all: widgets. We currently have ten widgets which can be added to the dashboard grid to show various types of data, and we’ll be adding more widget types and contents in the future. Following is a quick rundown of the currently available widgets:

Graph

Graph widgets let you add existing graphs to your dashboard. You may choose any graph from the “My Graphs” section under your current account. Graph widgets are refreshed every few minutes to ensure they’re always up-to-date.

Beacon Map

Map widgets let you add existing Beacon maps to your dashboard. You may choose any map query from the “Beacons” page (under the “Checks” section of your current account). Map widgets are updated in real-time.

Beacon Table

Table widgets let you add existing Beacon tables to your dashboard. You may choose any table query from the “Beacons” page (under the “Checks” section of your current account). Table widgets are updated in real-time.

Chart

Chart widgets let you select multiple metrics to monitor and compare in a bar or pie chart. Chart widgets are updated in real-time.

Gauge

Gauge widgets let you monitor the current state of a single numeric metric in a graphical manner, displaying the most recent value on a bar gauge (dial gauges are coming soon). Gauge widgets are updated in real-time.

Status

Status widgets let you monitor the current state of one or more metrics, displaying the most recent value with custom formatting. This is most useful for text metrics, but it may be used for numeric metrics as well. Status widgets are updated in real-time.

HTML

HTML widgets let you embed arbitrary HTML content on your dashboard. It can be used for just about anything, from displaying a logo or graphic to using an iframe to embed more in-depth content. Everything is permissible except Javascript. HTML widgets are refreshed every few minutes to ensure they’re always up-to-date.

List

List widgets let you add lists of graphs and worksheets to your dashboard, ordered by their last modified date. You may specify how many items to list and (optionally) a search string to limit the list. List widgets are refreshed every few minutes to ensure they’re always up-to-date.

Alerts

Alerts widgets let you monitor your checks by showing the most recent alerts on your current account. You may filter the alerts by their age (how long ago they occurred), by particular search terms, by severity levels, or other status criteria. Alerts widgets are refreshed every few minutes to ensure they’re always up-to-date.

Admin

Admin widgets let you monitor selected administrative information, including the status of all Circonus agents on your current account. Admin widgets are refreshed every few minutes to ensure they’re always up-to-date.

icons representing some of the current widget types

To add widgets to the dashboard grid, there are two methods: you may use the ‘drag-and-drop’ method (dragging from the “Add a Widget” panel), or you may first click the target grid cell and then select the widget you want to place there. (Note: in fullscreen mode only the latter method is available.) After a widget has been added, some types of widgets will automatically activate with default settings, but most will be inactive. If the widget is inactive, click it to open the settings panel and get started. Once the widget is activated, the settings panel is available by clicking the settings icon in the upper right corner of the widget. In the lower right corner of the widget is the resize handle, so you can resize the widget as frequently as you want. And let’s not forget being able to rearrange the widgets, every widget has a transparent ‘title bar’ at its top which you can use to drag it around. I won’t get into the details of settings for every type of widget, because they should be self-explanatory (and that would make this one super-long blog post). But suffice it to say, there are plenty of options for everyone.

We’ve been working hard to create a configurable dashboard that will be as flexible as Circonus itself is, and we believe we’ve hit pretty close to the mark. Here’s a sample dashboard showing the power of these new dashboards:


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