Build and share a dashboard

Build and share a dashboard

Before you proceed with this topic you should review Reporting on field values, where you have already built and saved a few reports. This topic walks you through creating simple dashboards that use the same searches and reports that you saved in the previous topics.

Back at the Flower & Gift Shop, your boss asks you to put together a dashboard to show metrics on the products sold at the shop. You also decide to build yourself a dashboard to help you find and troubleshoot any problems with the shop.

Flower & Gift Shop Products

The first dashboard will show metrics related to the day-to-day purchase of different products at the Flower & Gift shop.

1. To start, open the Views drop-down list and click Create dashboard....

This opens the Create new dashboard window.

2. Name your new dashboard.

2a. Designate a unique ID for it. This ID is the name you use to refer to the dashboard.

2b. Give your dashboard a Name. This Name is the label that you will see listed in the navigation menus and at the top of your dashboard.

3. Click Create to create your new dashboard.

When your new dashboard appears, it is empty.

4. To start defining panels for it, click Edit the dashboard to open the visual dashboard editor.

Splunk's visual dashboard editor enables you to create simple dashboards quickly. All you need to get going is a set of saved searches and saved reports that Splunk can use to populate dashboard panels with useful metrics and charts.

The Edit window for a New panel opens.

The visual dashboard editor enables you to create four types of dashboard panels: data tables, charts, event lists, and single value panels. All dashboard panels are associated with searches. You can determine whether a panel runs off of a predefined, saved search, or whether it uses a search that has been specifically designed for the panel and associated with it in an "inline" manner. For these dashboards, you'll just use saved searches and reports.

5. Add a Chart panel for the products purchased yesterday. (Purchases by Product Name)

The Chart panel type displays report results as a chart.

• Under Panel type, select Chart.
• Under Title, name the panel Products purchased (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the search "Products purchased (Yesterday)".
• Click Add panel.

The window expands to show the Panel layout section. This section shows a box which represents that panel you just defined. As you add more panels, you'll see more boxes here. This editor enables you to reorder and change the layout of the panels by dragging the boxes around.

Before you click Save, add a couple more panels, a chart and a data table:

6. Add a Chart panel for the count of purchases and views made yesterday. (# Purchases and Views)

• Under Title, name the panel Purchases & Views (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the saved search "Purchases & Views (Yesterday)".
• Click Add Panel.

7. Add a Data table panel for the products that were sold yesterday and how much was made yesterday.

The Data table panel type presents report results in tabular format.

• Under Panel type, select Data table.
• Under Title, name the panel Products & Revenue (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the saved search "Purchases and Revenue (Yesterday)".
• Click Add Panel.

8. Rearrange the boxes so that your layout looks like this:

9 Click Close.

Flower & Gift Shop Operations

The second dashboard includes simple reports that you can view at the start of your day to give you some information about recent Web access activity.

1. Return to the Search app. Select Create new dashboard... from the Actions menu.

2. Name your new dashboard:

3. Click Edit Dashboard.

The new panel edit window opens.

4. Add a single value panel for total number of website views yesterday.

The single value panel type displays a single numerical value as its result.

• Under Panel type, select Single value.
• Under Title, name the panel Total views (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the "Pageviews (Yesterday)".
• Click Add panel.

5. Add another single value panel to search for failed purchase attempts yesterday.

• Under Title, name the panel Failed purchases (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the "Failed purchases (Yesterday)".
• Click Add panel.

6. Add an event listing panel to search for any errors that occurred yesterday.

The event listing panel type displays your list of search results.

• Under Panel type, select Event listing.
• Under Title, name the panel Errors (Yesterday).
• Under Saved search, select the "Errors (Yesterday)".
• Click Add panel.

7. Reorganize your panels to look like this:

8. Click Close.

Share the dashboard Select Edit permissions to expand or restrict the role-based read and write permissions for the dashboard. When you set dashboard permissions you can also define the app availability of the app. The dashboard can be: A private view available only to yourself. Available to one app only (the app it was designed in) and the people who have permission to use it. "Globally" available to all Splunk apps in your system (and therefore all of your Splunk users).

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