Dashboards are defined by administrator and allow to combine any available visualization components with data from multiple sources in order to create high-level views to see network (or parts of it) health at a glance. For example, below is a dashboard showing traffic information from core router, as well as CPU usage from vital nodes:
There are two ways to access dashboards:
- Open dashboard from Object Browser
- Switch to Dashboard perspective and select dashboard with left-click
Configuration
Dashboards is a special type of objects created in Dashboards tree. To create a new dashboard, select Create dashboard from context menu of Dashboards object or if ant existing dashboard object. To configure dashboard content, open object's properties and go to Dashboard Elements page. Here you can define number of columns in dashboard, and manage list of elements. Press Add to add new element. You will be prompted with element type selection dialog:
When new element added, you can edit it by double-clicking on record in elements list, or by pressing Edit button. Each dashboard element has Layout property page which controls element's layout inside dashboard, and one or more element type specific pages to control element's appearance and displayed information.
Layout
Layout page looks like following:
Meaning of each property is following:
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Horizontal alignment | Horizontal alignment for this element. Possible values are FILL, CENTER, LEFT, and RIGHT. |
| Vertical alignment | Vertical alignment for this element. Possible values are FILL, CENTER, TOP, and BOTTOM. |
| Horizontal span | Specify how many grid cells this element will occupy horizontally. |
| Vertical span | Specify how many grid cells this element will occupy vertically. |
| Width hint | Hint for element's width in pixels. Default value of -1 means that layout manager will decide width for element. |
| Height hint | Hint for element's height in pixels. Default value of -1 means that layout manager will decide width for element. |
More detailed information about dashboard layouts can be found in UM:Dashboards#Understanding_Layouts.
Understanding Layouts
Dashboard uses grid concept to layout it's elements. Available space divided into rows and columns, and each element occupies one or more cells. Number of columns configured in dashboard object properties, and number of rows calculated automatically based on number of columns, number of elements, and number of cells occupied by each element. Elements are laid out in columns from left to right, and a new row is created when there are no space left for next element on current row. Each element has horizontal and vertical alignment properties. Default for both is FILL. Possible alignment values are following:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| FILL | Make element to fill whole cell. Also causes to grab excess free space available inside dashboard. If more than one element is trying to grab the same space, then the excess space is shared evenly among the grabbing elements. |
| CENTER | Center element within cell. |
| LEFT/TOP | Align element to left/top of the cell. |
| RIGHT/BOTTOM | Align element to right/bottom of the cell. |
Below is an example of complex layout configuration:
And the result is following: