Create charts in Splunk Observability Cloud đź”—
Splunk Observability Cloud provides a number of built-in dashboards for services you integrate with Splunk Observability Cloud. These dashboards have charts that track key metrics for integrated services. In many cases, you don’t have to create any additional charts or dashboards. However, if you do need a chart that isn’t included in a built-in dashboard, the following sections show you how to create a chart.
Before you create a chart, you need to have an idea of which metrics you want to track. Metrics appear on the chart as signals, which the documentation also refers to as plot lines or plots. If you are unfamiliar with the metrics available, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud to see the metrics that your organization receives for your dashboards.
Also consider customizing the defaults for your charts. You can filter metrics to limit the data to specific hosts, or specify a different time range for the chart. You can return to customize chart features at any time.
Note
Instead of displaying metrics on a chart, you can also:
Create a chart that contains a text note. See Add a text note to a dashboard. Use this feature to add documentation and guidance to a dashboard, because the text chart appears as one of the charts in the dashboard.
Create a chart that contains events (an event feed). See Add an event feed chart to a dashboard
Overlay events on a chart that already displays metrics. See View events on a chart.
Link a detector to a chart and display its alert status on the chart. See Link detectors to charts.
Create a chart đź”—
Once you have an initial plan for the metrics you want to display on your chart, there are various ways to create a chart, depending on your starting point.
Note
You can’t add charts to a built-in dashboard. For more information, see Built-in dashboards.
To create one or more simple charts on a new or existing dashboard, see Create simple charts using Splunk Observability Cloud. This technique is also a good choice if you want to see what metrics are available, because you can see them in the Metrics Sidebar.
To copy charts you see on a dashboard to a new or existing dashboard, see Copy charts.
To copy charts you are viewing in the Chart Builder, use the Save As option (see Save a chart), change the name as desired, and choose the dashboard where you want to place the copied chart. If you have edited the chart, those changes will be reflected in the copied chart.
To create a chart based on a metric you have found in the Metadata Catalog, see Create a chart from the Metadata Catalog.
To build a chart from scratch, see Create a new chart using the Chart Builder.
To programmatically create a chart instead of creating one through the user interface, see Create a chart using Splunk Observability Cloud API.
Copy charts đź”—
You can copy charts from one or multiple dashboards to a clipboard. This technique is useful if you are troubleshooting an issue and want to pull some existing charts together to view on a new dashboard (see Create a dashboard), or if you want to copy charts from one dashboard to another.
You can also use this method to “move” a chart from one dashboard to another; after copying a chart, delete the original chart.
Follow these steps to copy charts to a clipboard:
To start, open the dashboard containing the chart you want to copy. Staying in the dashboard view, select Copy from the Chart actions drop-down menu of the chart you want to copy. You have to be in dashboard view to see the Copy option.
When you copy a chart, a counter on the Create icon on the navigation bar indicates how many charts you have copied to the clipboard.
To copy another chart to the clipboard, select Chart actions > Add to Clipboard from a different chart, or select the Add to clipboard icon on another chart while in the dashboard view. The counter increments as you add additional charts.
Different options on the Create menu let you paste the charts onto a dashboard. Pasting charts clears the clipboard.
To paste the charts into a dashboard you are viewing, select Paste Charts from the Create menu. You must have write permissions for the dashboard. See Read and write permissions in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring for more detail.
If you see Dashboard with <n> copied charts on the Create menu, select that option to create a new, unsaved dashboard and paste the charts into it.
If you see Dashboard (unsaved) on the Create menu, you have already added charts to a new dashboard and haven’t saved the dashboard yet. Select this option to open the unsaved dashboard, then select Paste Charts.
To clear the clipboard contents without pasting the charts to a dashboard, select Clear Clipboard from the Create menu.
Create a new chart using the Chart Builder đź”—
Select Chart from the Create menu. Alternatively, you can select New Chart on custom dashboards.
Search for metrics or events you want to plot on your chart. For more information, see Plot metrics and events using chart builder in Splunk Observability Cloud.
Note
You can add functions to your chart with the F(x) column. See Apply analytics to a plot and Functions reference for Splunk Observability Cloud for more details.
Customize your chart. See Chart Options in the Chart Builder.
See also Select a chart type.
Create a chart from the Metric Finder đź”—
Use the Metric Finder to find the metric you want to track. From the results page, select the metric name to open the Chart Builder, pre-populated with your metric.
See also Select a chart type.
Create a chart from the Metadata Catalog đź”—
You can also create a chart from the Metadata Catalog. Select a metric from the list in the sidebar, then select View in Chart in the preview pane to open the Chart Builder, pre-populated with your metric.
See also Select a chart type.
Create a chart using Splunk Observability Cloud API đź”—
If you prefer to work programmatically, see Display Data Using Charts to create a chart with API.
Select a chart type đź”—
Available chart types are shown as icons in the chart’s title bar. You can also select a chart type in the Chart Options tab. Hover over an icon to see which chart type it represents, then select an icon to display the chart in that format. The selected chart type is highlighted and indicated by a small pointer.
To learn more about different chart types, see Chart types in Splunk Observability Cloud.
Note
In some cases, you might want to create multiple charts for the same data displayed in different ways. One way to do that is to copy a chart then change the chart type after you paste it from the clipboard. Another way is to change the chart type and then use Save as to save it as a new chart, preferably with a new name. See Copy charts for more information.
The chart type you select is applied as a default to all the plots on the chart, but you can use different visualizations for individual plots. To learn more, see Set options in the plot configuration panel.
Edit a chart đź”—
To edit a chart, open it from any dashboard or the Dashboard panel of a navigator. Editing a chart is essentially identical to building a chart. See Plot metrics and events using chart builder in Splunk Observability Cloud.
If you don’t have write permissions for the dashboard containing the chart, or you are in a built-in dashboard, you have to use Save as to save the edited chart.
Save a chart đź”—
When you finish creating or editing a chart, select Save, Save as, or Save and close from the Chart actions drop-down menu of the chart. The button text varies depending on how you created or opened the chart. If the button is not labeled with the option you want, you can select other options from the Chart actions menu.
If you don’t have write permissions for the dashboard you are viewing, or you are in a built-in dashboard, you can’t see an option to save the chart. Instead, you have to use Save as to save the chart.
If you don’t want to save your changes, select Close.
Note
If you select Close, you will not be prompted to save the chart, even if you have made some changes. Any unsaved changes will be lost.